An Introduction to the Prose and Poetical Works of John Milton
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Title: An Introduction to the Prose and Poetical Works of John Milton
Author: John Milton
Editor: Hiram Corson
Release date: January 23, 2014 [eBook #44733]
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Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AN INTRODUCTION TO THE PROSE AND POETICAL WORKS OF JOHN MILTON ***
Transcriber's Notes: Words in italics in the original are surrounded by
_underscores_. A row of asterisks represents an ellipsis. Ellipses match
the original. Some indented lines of poetry and hemistichs will not
display properly unless the reader uses a mono-spaced font. Other notes
follow the text.
AN INTRODUCTION TO THE PROSE
AND POETICAL WORKS OF
JOHN MILTON
AN INTRODUCTION
TO THE
PROSE AND POETICAL WORKS
OF
JOHN MILTON
_Comprising all the Autobiographic Passages in his Works, the more Explicit
Presentations of his Ideas of True Liberty_
_COMUS, LYCIDAS, and SAMSON AGONISTES_
_With Notes and Forewords_
BY
HIRAM CORSON, LL.D.
_Professor of English Literature in the Cornell University_
NEW YORK
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., LTD.
1899
_All rights reserved_
COPYRIGHT, 1899,
BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.
Norwood Press
J. S. Cushing & Co.—Berwick & Smith
Norwood Mass. U.S.A.
'Servant of God, well done! Well hast thou fought
The better fight, who single hast maintained
Against revolted multitudes the cause
Of truth, in word mightier than they in arms,
And for the testimony of truth hast borne
Universal reproach, far worse to bear
Than violence; for this was all thy care—
To stand approved in sight of God, though worlds
Judged thee perverse.'
—_Paradise Lost_, VI. 29-37.
'O mighty-mouthed inventor of harmonies,
O skilled to sing of Time or Eternity,
God-gifted organ-voice of England,
Milton, a name to resound for ages;
Whose Titan angels, Gabriel, Abdiel,
Starred from Jehovah's gorgeous armories,
Tower as the deep-domed empyrean
Rings to the roar of an angel onset—
Me rather all that bowery loneliness,
The brooks of Eden mazily murmuring,
And bloom profuse and cedar arches
Charm, as a wanderer out in ocean,
Where some refulgent sunset of India
Streams o'er a rich ambrosial ocean isle,
And crimson-hued the stately palmwoods
Whisper in odorous heights of even.'
—TENNYSON.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PAGES
INTRODUCTION xiii-xxxii
MILTON'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY 1-103
From A Defence of the English People 2-6
From Second Defence of the People of England 6-27
To Charles Diodati (_Elegia Prima_) 28-30
To Alexander Gill, Jr. (Familiar Letters, No. III.) 30, 31
To Thomas Young (Familiar Letters, No. IV.) 31
To Charles Diodati (_Elegia Sexta_) 31-33
Prolusiones quædam Oratoriæ 33-35
To Father (_Ad Patrem_) 35-40
English letter to a friend (unknown) who, it appears, had
been calling him to account for his apparent indifference
as to his work in life 40-43
Sonnet: On his having arrived at the age of twenty-three 42, 43
To Alexander Gill, Jr. (Familiar Letters, No. V.) 43-44
To Charles Diodati (Familiar Letters, Nos. VI., VII.) 44-46
To Benedetto Bonmattei of Florence (Familiar Letters, No.
VIII.) 46
From Mansus, Latin poem addressed to Manso, Marquis of
Villa 47
From Areopagitica: a speech for the liberty of unlicensed
printing 48, 49
To Lucas Holstenius in the Vatican at Rome (Familiar
Letters, No. IX.) 49, 50
Epitaphium Damonis 50, 51
From Of Reformation in England 52-54
From Animadversions upon the Remonstrant's Defence, etc. 54-56
From The Reason of Church Government urged against Prelaty 56-65
From Apology for Smectymnuus 65-82
To Carlo Dati, Nobleman of Florence (Familiar Letters,
No. X.) 82-84
Sonnet: On his Blindness 84, 85
To the most distinguished Leonard Philaras, of Athens,
Ambassador from the Duke of Parma to the King of France
(Familiar Letters, No. XII.) 85, 86
To Henry Oldenburg, agent for the city of Bremen in Lower
Saxony with the Commonwealth (Familiar Letters, No. XIV.) 87, 88
To Leonard Philaras, Athenian (Familiar Letters, No. XV.) 88-90
Sonnet: To Cyriac Skinner 91
Sonnet: On his deceased wife 91
To the most accomplished Emeric Bigot (Familiar Letters,
No. XXI.) 92
To Henry Oldenburg (Familiar Letters, No. XXIX.) 93
From Considerations touching the Likeliest Means to remove
Hirelings out of the Church (August, 1659) 94-96
Autobiographic passages in the Paradise Lost 96-102
To the very distinguished Peter Heimbach, Councillor to
the Elector of Brandenburg (Familiar Letters, No.
XXXI.) 102, 103
Passages in Milton's prose and poetical works in which his
idea of true liberty, individual, domestic, civil,
political, and religious, is explicitly set forth 104-125
Comus: a Masque presented at Ludlow Castle, 1634, before
the Earl of Bridgewater, then President of Wales 126-164
Lycidas 165-179
Samson Agonistes 181-244
NOTES 245-303
INTRODUCTION
Milton's prose works are perhaps not read, at the present day, to the
extent demanded by their great and varied merits, among which may be
named their uncompromising advocacy of whatsoever things are true,
honest, just, pure, lovely, and of good report; their eloquent assertion
of the inalienable rights of men to a wholesome exercise of their
intellectual faculties, the right to determine for themselves, with all
the aids they can command, what is truth and what is error; the right
freely to communicate their honest thoughts from one to another,—rights
which constitute the only sure and lasting foundation of individual,
civil, political, and religious liberty; the ever-conscious sentiment
which they exhibit, on the part of the poet, of an entire dependence
upon 'that Eternal Spirit, who can enrich with all utterance and
knowledge, and sends out his Seraphim with the hallowed fire of his
altar, to touch and purify the lips of whom he pleases'; the
ever-present consciousness they exhibit of that stewardship which every
man as a probationer of immortality must render an account, according to
the full measure of the talents with which he has been intrusted—of the
sacred obligation, incumbent upon every one, of acting throughout the
details of life, private or public, trivial or momentous, 'as ever in
his great Task-Master's eye.'
Some of his poetical works are extensively 'studied' in the schools, and
a style study of some of his prose works is made in departments of
rhetoric; but his prose works cannot be said to be much read in the best
sense of the word,—that is, with all the faculties alert upon the
subject-matter as of prime importance, with an openness of heart, and
with an accompanying interest in the general loftiness of their diction;
in short, as every one should train himself to read any great author,
with the fullest loyalty to the author—by which is not meant that all
his thoughts and opinions and beliefs are to be accepted, but that what
they really are be adequately, or _ad modum recipientis_, apprehended;
in other words, loyalty to an author means that the most favorable
attitude possible for each and every reader be taken for the reception
of his meaning and spirit.
Mark Pattison, in his life of Milton, in the 'English Men of Letters,'
while fully recognizing the grand features of the prose works as
monuments of the English language, notwithstanding what he calls their
'asyntactic disorder,' undervalues, or rather does not value at all,
Milton's services to the cause of political and religious liberty as a
polemic prose writer, and considers it a thing to be much regretted that
he engaged at all in the great contest for political, religious, and
other forms of liberty. This seems to be the one unacceptable feature of
his very able life of the poet. 'But for the Restoration,' he says, 'and
the overthrow of the Puritans, we should never have had the great
Puritan epic.' Professor Goldwin Smith, in his article in the _New York
Nation_ on Pattison's 'Milton,' remarks: 'Looking upon the life of
Milton the politician merely as a sad and ignominious interlude in the
life of Milton the poet, Mr. Pattison cannot be expected to entertain
the idea that the poem is in any sense the work of the politician. Yet
we cannot help thinking that the tension and elevation which Milton's
nature had undergone in the mighty struggle, together with the heroic
dedication of his faculties to the most serious objects, must have had
not a little to do both with the final choice of his subject and with
the tone of his poem. "The great Puritan epic" could hardly have been
written by any one but a militant Puritan.'
Dr. Richard Garnett, in his 'Life of Milton,' pp. 68, 69, takes
substantially the same view as does Professor Smith: 'To regret with
Pattison that Milton should, at this crisis of the State, have turned
aside from poetry to controversy, is to regret that "Paradise Lost"
should exist. Such a work could not have proceeded from one indifferent
to the public weal. . . . It is sheer literary fanaticism to speak with
Pattison of "the prostitution of genius to political party." Milton is
as much the idealist in his prose as in his verse; and although in his
pamphlets he sides entirely with one of the two great parties in the
State, it is not as its instrument, but as its prophet and monitor.'
Milton was writing prose when, Mr. Pattison thinks, he should have been
writing poetry, 'and that most ephemeral and valueless kind of prose,
pamphlets, extempore articles on the topics of the day. He poured out
reams of them, _in simple unconsciousness that they had no influence
whatever on the current of events_.'
But they certainly had an influence, and a very great influence, on the
current of events not many years after. The restoration of Charles II.
did not mean that the work of Puritanism was undone, and that Milton's
pamphlets were to be of no effect. It was in a large measure due to that
work and to those pamphlets that in a few years—fourteen only after
Milton's death—the constitutional basis of the monarchy underwent a
quite radical change for the better,—a change which would have been a
solace to Milton, if he could have lived to see it; and he could then
have justly felt that he had contributed to the change. He would have
been but eighty years old, if he had lived till the revolution of 1688.
A man constituted as Milton was could not have kept himself apart from
the great conflicts of his time. He was a patriot in every fibre of his
being. He realized in the cultivation of himself his definition of
education, given in his tractate 'Of Education. To Master S. Hartlib':
'I call a complete and generous education that which fits a man to
perform justly, skilfully, and magnanimously all the offices, both
private and public, of peace and war.' Of course he did not mean that
that was all of education. And in his 'Areopagitica,' he says, after
defining 'the true warfaring Christian,' 'I cannot praise a fugitive and
cloistered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out
and sees her adversary, but slinks out of the race, where that immortal
garland is to be run for, not without dust and heat.'
Although the direct subjects of his polemic prose works may not have an
interest for the general reader at the present day, they are all,
independently of their direct subjects, charged with 'truths that perish
never,' most vitally expressed. And this is as true of the 'Treatises on
Divorce' as it is of any of the other prose works. They are full of
bright gems of enduring truth.
Lord Macaulay's article on Milton, first published in the _Edinburgh
Review_ for August, 1825, is a brilliant and, in many respects, a
valuable production, but he certainly says some things on the
favorableness of an uncivilized age, and the unfavorableness of a
civilized and learned age, to poetical creativeness, which are quite
remote from the truth, and which Milton would certainly have regarded as
abundantly absurd. So, too, he would have regarded what is said of the
necessary struggle which a great poet must make against the spirit of
his age. All these views are as completely at variance with Milton's own
as are those of Mark Pattison in regard to Milton the politician.
Lord Macaulay's article was occasioned by the publication of an English
version, by Rev. Charles Richard Sumner, afterwards Bishop of
Winchester, of Milton's 'Treatise on Christian Doctrine,' the existence
of which was unknown up to the year 1823, when the original manuscript
in Latin was found in a press of the old State Paper office, in
Whitehall.
In this essay the author sets forth an opinion, still widely
entertained, it may be, by a large number of cultivated people, namely,
that as learning and general civilization, and science, with its
applications to the physical needs and comforts of life, advance, Poetry
recedes, and 'hides her diminished head,' and men become more and more
subject to facts as facts, losing sight more and more of the poetical,
that is, spiritual, relations of facts.
'Milton knew,' Macaulay tells us, 'that his poetical genius derived no
advantage from the civilization which surrounded him, or from the
learning which he had acquired; and he looked back with something of
regret to the ruder age of simple words and vivid impressions.'
But it appears from Milton's own authority that he did not know this;
that, on the contrary, he thought the poet should be master of all human
learning, ancient and modern, should know many languages and many
literatures; that 'by labour and _intense study_, which,' he adds, 'I
take to be my portion in this life, joined with the strong propensity of
nature, I might perhaps leave something so written to after-times, as
they should not willingly let it die.' Some of the autobiographic
passages contained in this book will be found a sufficient refutation of
what has been quoted from Macaulay.
The view which Milton took of learning, and acted upon, is one which
should be kept before the minds of students at the present day, when the
tendency is so strong toward learning for its own sake. As well talk of
beefsteak for its own sake. Learning was with Milton a means of
enlarging his capacity—a means toward _being_ and _doing_. Mark
Pattison well says, 'He cultivated, not letters, but himself, and sought
to enter into possession of his own mental kingdom, not that he might
reign there, but that he might royally use its resources in building up
a work which should bring honour to his country, and his native tongue.'
'Though we admire,' Lord Macaulay continues, 'those great works of
imagination which have appeared in dark ages, we do not admire them the
more because they have appeared in dark ages. On the contrary, we hold
that the most wonderful and splendid proof of genius is a great poem
produced in a civilized age. We cannot understand why those who believe
in that most orthodox article of literary faith, that the earliest poets
are generally the best, should wonder at the rule as if it were the
exception. Surely the uniformity of the phenomenon indicates a
corresponding uniformity in the cause.'
Further on he says: 'He who, in an enlightened and literary society,
aspires to be a great poet, must first become a little child.' The most
highly learned and cultured (eternalized), the most fully developed in
every direction, are the most _childlike_, the least knowledge-proud,
and the more spiritual vitality they have, the greater will be their
humility and simplicity—the gates to true wisdom. 'He [the poet] must
take to pieces,' says Macaulay, 'the whole web of his mind.' Rather a
difficult piece of unravelling to impose upon the poor fellow! 'He must
unlearn much of that knowledge which has perhaps constituted hitherto
his chief title of superiority.' Oh, who would be a poet in a civilized
age! 'His very talents will be a hindrance to him.' What an irredeemable
numskull he would have a poet to be! According to this doctrine, our
institutions for feeble-minded children are likely to send forth the
best poets into the world. 'His difficulties will be proportioned to
his proficiency in the pursuits which are fashionable among his
contemporaries, and that proficiency will in general be proportioned to
the vigor and activity of his mind. . . . We have seen in our own time,
great talents, intense labor, and long meditation, employed in this
struggle against the spirit of the age, and employed, we will not say
absolutely in vain, but with dubious success and feeble applause.'
Of all the flimsy theories in regard to the conditions of poetic
creativeness that the mind of man could devise, this is certainly the
flimsiest. It is only necessary to give a hasty glance at the works of
those poets who are regarded as Masters of Song in the various
literatures of the ancient and the modern world, to learn the secret of
their vitality and power—that secret being, first, that they all
possessed the best knowledge and learning of their times and places;
and, secondly, that they all held the widest and most intimate relations
with their several ages and countries, and drank deepest of, and most
intensely reflected, the spirit of those ages and countries. If
Shakespeare was not a learned man, he was the best educated man that
ever lived. He had a fulness of life, intellectual and spiritual, and an
easy command of all his faculties, to which but few of the sons of men
have ever attained; and he lived in an age the most favorable in human
history for the exercise of dramatic genius, and an age, on the whole,
more civilized than any that had ever preceded it.
No true poet could live in any age without imbibing and reflecting its
spirit, and that to a much greater degree than other men. For the poetic
nature is distinguished from ordinary natures by its greater
impressibility and its keener, more penetrating insight, and to suppose
that a poet can keep apart from the spirit of his age and the state of
society around him is to lose sight of the very _differentia_ of the
poetic nature, and implicitly to admit its feebleness. In one respect he
may be said to keep apart from his age, in the sense of rejecting, in
having no affinities for, what in it is ephemeral, while appropriating
what of vital and eternal is in it. His affinities, by virtue of his
poetic nature, are for what is enduring in the transient. And every age
must have the vital and eternal in it, as the vital and eternal are
omnipresent at all times and in all places.
The great poet is great because he is intensely _individual_, and there
can be no intense individuality, paradoxical as it may appear, that is
not subject, in a more than ordinary degree, to impressions of time and
place. An individual in the fullest sense of the word, one who
legitimates, as it were, in the eyes of his country or his age, his
decisive influence over its destiny, is generally characterized, not so
much by his rejecting power, though he will always, and necessarily,
have this in a high degree, as by his appropriating power. He brings to
the special unity of his nature all that that nature, in its healthiest
activity, can assimilate, and throws off only the to him non-assimilable
dross of things. The more complete his life becomes, the more it is
bound up with what surrounds it, and he is susceptible of impressions
the more numerous and the more profound.
The greater impressibility (spiritual sensitiveness) and its resultant,
the keener, more penetrating insight ('the vision and the faculty
divine'), which preëminently distinguish poetic genius from ordinary
natures, render great poets the truest historians of their times and the
truest prophets. The poetic and dramatic literature of a people is a
mirror in which is most clearly reflected their real and essential life.
History gives rather their phenomenal life. It is the essential spirit
only of an age, the permanent, the absolute, in it, as assimilated and
'married to immortal verse' by a great poet, that can retain a hold upon
the interests and sympathies of future generations.
Milton was most emphatically a man of his age, and its clearest
reflector, sustaining to it the most intimate and sympathetic and
intensely active relationship; and, of all that was enduring in it, his
works, both prose and poetical, are the best existing exponent. His
intimate relationship with his age has been set forth in Dr. Masson's
exhaustive and grandly monumental work, in six large octavo volumes,
'The Life of John Milton: narrated in connexion with the political,
ecclesiastical, and literary history of his time.' No other poet in
universal literature, unless Dante be an exception, ever sustained such
a relationship to the great movements of his time and country that an
exhaustive biography of him would need to be, to the same extent,
'narrated in connexion with the political, ecclesiastical, and literary
history of his time.'
Milton might justly and proudly have said of himself, with reference to
the fierce political and ecclesiastical conflicts of his time, '_quorum
pars magna fui_.' And who can doubt that by these conflicts, and even,
also, by his loss of sight therein, he was _tempered_ to write the
'Paradise Lost,' the 'Paradise Regained,' and the 'Samson Agonistes'? He
might have written some other great work, if he had kept himself apart
from these conflicts, as Pattison thinks he ought to have done, but he
certainly could not have written the 'Paradise Lost.' Of the principles
involved in the great contest for civil and religious liberty his prose
works are the fullest exponent. In the 'Paradise Lost' can be seen the
influence of his classical and Italian studies. Homer and Virgil and
Dante are in it, but its essential, vitalizing, controlling spirit is
that of a refined exalted Puritanism, freed from all that was in it of
the contingent and the accidental; and thus that spirit will be
preserved for ever in the pure amber of the poem.
It was not within the scope of this little book, as a primary
introduction to the study of Milton, to include any extended
presentation of the 'Paradise Lost.' But two grand features may be
alluded to here. It is, in some respects, one of the most _educating_ of
English poems. The grand feature of the poem, that feature which
distinguishes it from all other works of genius, both ancient and
modern, is its essential, constitutional sublimity. So universally has
this feature been recognized as peculiar to the poem, that the word
Miltonic has become synonymous with the sublime. The loftiness of the
diction, which is without all touch of bombast, every sympathetic reader
must feel to be an emanation from the august personality of the poet.
There is no perceptible strain anywhere, as there is no perceptible
lapse of power, on the part of the poet. He keeps ever up to the height
of his great argument. To come into the fullest possible sympathetic
relationship with the poem's constitutional sublimity, to be impressed
by its loftiness of diction, by the contriving spirit of its eloquence,
are educating experiences of the highest order—experiences which imply
an exercise, most vitalizing and uplifting, of the reader's higher
organs of apprehension and discernment. The theology of the poem need
not obstruct for any one these educating influences. They are quite
independent of the theology, as are the educating influences of the
'Divina Commedia' independent of its mediæval Catholicism. The absolute
man was in the ascendent in both Dante and Milton; and by virtue of that
ascendency, they are, and ever will continue to be, great educating
personalities, whatever false science and false opinions on various
subjects are embodied in their works, and however much the world's faith
in things which they most vitally believed may decline and entirely
cease to be. Their personalities and their works are consubstantial.
This fact—an immortal fact—was, perhaps, not taken sufficient account
of by Mark Pattison when he wrote in his 'Life of Milton' that 'the
demonology of the poem has already, with educated readers, passed from
the region of fact into that of fiction. Not so universally, but with a
large number of readers, the angelology can be no more than what the
critics call machinery. And it requires a violent effort from any of our
day to accommodate our conceptions to the anthropomorphic theology of
"Paradise Lost." Were the sapping process to continue at the same rate
for two more centuries, the possibility of epic illusion would be lost
to the whole scheme and economy of the poem.' But there is a power in
'Paradise Lost' which is, and ever will be, independent of all manner of
obsolete beliefs.
Both the 'Paradise Lost' and the 'Divina Commedia' belong, in a
supereminent degree, to what Thomas De Quincey calls, in his 'Essay on
Pope,' the literature of _power_, as distinguished from the literature
of _knowledge_; and, as a consequence, the statement of Mark Pattison
that 'there is an element of decay and death in poems which we vainly
style immortal,' is not applicable to them. By the literature of power
is meant that which is, in whatever form, an adequate embodiment of
eternal verities—verities of the human soul and of the divine
constitution of things, and their mutual adaptation, however much the
former may be estranged from the latter. Such embodiment will maintain
its individual existence.
'In that great social order, which collectively we call literature,'
says De Quincey, 'there may be distinguished two separate offices that
may blend and often _do_ so, but capable severally of a severe
insulation, and naturally fitted for reciprocal repulsion. There is,
first, the literature of knowledge, and, secondly, the literature of
_power_. The function of the first is to _teach_; the function of the
second is to _move_. . . . The first speaks to the _mere_ discursive
understanding; the second speaks ultimately, it may happen, to the
higher understanding or reason, but always _through_ affections of
pleasure and sympathy. . . . Whenever we talk in ordinary language of
seeking information or gaining knowledge, we understand the words as
connected with something of absolute novelty. But it is the grandeur of
all truth which can occupy a very high place in human interests, that it
is never absolutely novel to the meanest of minds: it exists eternally
by way of germ or latent principle in the lowest as in the highest,
needing to be developed, but never to be planted. To be capable of
transplantation is the immediate criterion of a truth that ranges on a
lower scale. Besides which, there is a rarer thing than truth, namely,
_power_ or deep sympathy with truth.'
By the truth which 'is never absolutely novel to the meanest of minds,'
De Quincey means absolute, eternal truth, inherent in the human soul, as
distinguished from relative, temporal truth, the former being more or
less 'cabined, cribbed, confined' in all men. As Paracelsus is made to
express it, in Browning's poem 'Paracelsus,' 'There is an inmost centre
in us all, where truth abides in fulness; . . . and "to know" rather
consists in opening out a way whence the imprisoned splendor may escape,
than in effecting entry for a light supposed to be without.'
To continue with De Quincey: 'What you owe to Milton [and he has the
'Paradise Lost' specially in his mind] is not any knowledge, of which a
million separate items are still but a million of advancing steps on the
same earthly level; what you owe is _power_, that is, exercise and
expansion to your own latent capacity of sympathy with the infinite,
where every pulse and each separate influx is a step upwards—a step
ascending as upon a Jacob's ladder from earth to mysterious altitudes
above the earth. _All_ the steps of knowledge, from first to last, carry
you further on the same plane, but could never raise you one foot
above your ancient level of earth; whereas the very _first_ step in
power is a flight—is an ascending into another element where earth is
forgotten. . . . The very highest work that has ever existed in the
literature of knowledge is but a _provisional_ work: a book upon trial
and sufferance, and _quamdiu bene se gesserit_. Let its teaching be even
partially revised, let it be but expanded, nay, even let its teaching be
but placed in a better order, and instantly it is superseded. Whereas
the feeblest works in the literature of power, surviving at all, survive
as finished and unalterable amongst men. For instance, the "Principia"
of Sir Isaac Newton was a book _militant_ on earth from the first. In
all stages of its progress it would have to fight for its existence;
first, as regards absolute truth; secondly, when that combat is over, as
regards its form or mode of presenting the truth. And as soon as a La
Place, or anybody else, builds higher upon the foundations laid by
this book, effectually he throws it out of the sunshine into decay
and darkness; by weapons won from this book he superannuates and
destroys this book, so that soon the name of Newton remains as a mere
_nominis umbra_, but his book, as a living power, has transmigrated
into other forms. Now, on the contrary, the "Iliad," the "Prometheus" of
Æschylus,—the "Othello" or "King Lear,"—the "Hamlet" or "Macbeth,"—and
the "Paradise Lost," are not militant, but triumphant forever as long as
the languages exist in which they speak or can be taught to speak. They
never _can_ transmigrate into new incarnations. . . . All the literature
of knowledge builds only ground-nests, that are swept away by floods, or
confounded by the plough; but the literature of power builds nests in
aërial altitudes of temples, sacred from violation, or of forests
inaccessible to fraud.'
I would not give these extended quotations from De Quincey were it not
that there may be many students who will read this book, and who will
not have access to the works of De Quincey. Those who have, should read
all that he says on the subject. The distinction which he makes between
the literature of knowledge and the literature of power was never before
so clearly and eloquently made, and it is a distinction which needs to
be especially emphasized in these days of excessive knowledge-mongery,
apart from education. Literature is largely made in the schools a
knowledge subject. The great function of literature, namely, to bring
into play the spiritual faculties, is very inadequately recognized, and
the study of English Literature is made too much an objective job—the
fault of teachers, not students. When the literature is studied as a
life-giving power, students are always more interested than when
everything else except the one thing needful receives attention,—the
sources of works of genius, the influences under which they were
produced, their relations to history and to time and place, and whatever
else may be made to engage the minds of students in the absence of the
teacher's ability to bring them into a sympathetic relationship with the
informing life of the works 'studied'—with that which constitutes their
absolute power.
Another important feature of the 'Paradise Lost' to which I would call
attention, and of which much should be made in the study of the poem, as
a condition of assimilating its educating power, is the verse, which
more fully realizes Wordsworth's definition and notion of harmonious
verse, given by Coleridge in the third of his 'Satyrane's Letters,' than
any other blank verse in the language. The definition, it is evident,
was meant to apply more particularly to non-dramatic blank verse.
Wordsworth's definition is, as given by Coleridge, that 'harmonious
verse consists (the English iambic blank verse above all) in the apt
arrangement of pauses and cadences and the sweep of whole paragraphs,
"with many a winding bout
Of linkèd sweetness long drawn out,"
and not in the even flow, much less in the prominence or antithetic
vigor of single lines, which are indeed injurious to the total effect,
except where they are introduced for some specific purpose.'
In my 'Primer of English Verse' (Ginn & Co., Boston), I have presented
the two grand features of Milton's blank verse, namely: (1) The
melodious variety of his cadences closing within verses, this being one
of the essentials of 'true musical delight' which Milton mentions, in
his remarks on 'The Verse,' 'the sense variously drawn out from one
verse into another'; and (2) the melodious and harmonious grouping of
verses into what may, with entire propriety, be called stanzas—stanzas
which are more organic than the uniformly constructed stanzas of rhymed
verse. The latter must be more or less artificial, by reason of the
uniformity which is maintained. But the stanzas of Milton's blank verse
are waves of melody and harmony which are larger or smaller, and with
ever varied cadences, according to the propulsion of the thought and
feeling which produces them, which propulsion may be sustained through a
dozen verses or more, or may expend itself in two or three. No other
blank verse in the language exhibits such a masterly skill in the
variation of its pauses—pauses, I mean, where periodic groups, or
logical sections of groups, terminate after, or within, it may be, the
first, second, third, or fourth foot of a verse. There are five cases
where the termination is within the fifth foot.
Stanza is quite exclusively applied to uniform groups of rhymed verses,
but it can be with equal propriety applied to the _varied_ groups of
blank verses, especially those of the 'Paradise Lost.' For the proper
appreciation of the individual verses in Milton's blank verse, they must
be read in groups,—a group sometimes, perhaps generally, beginning
within a verse and ending within a verse. These groups are due to the
unifying action of feeling, just as much as rhymed stanzas are, and,
indeed, often, if not generally, more so.
The autobiographical passages which have been brought together from the
prose and poetical works, occupying 103 pages of the book, exhibit the
man, Milton, better than could any regular biography of the same extent.
The latter could give more of the details of his outward life and
experiences, but could not so reflect his personality, his inmost being.
He was most emphatically a _person_. He realized in himself what is
expressed in the following verses from Tennyson's 'Œnone':
'Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control,
These three alone lead life to sovereign power.
Yet not for power (power of herself
Would come uncalled for), but to live by law,
Acting the law we live by without fear;
And, because right is right, to follow right
Were wisdom in the scorn of consequence.'
He also realized in himself what he says in his 'Areopagitica': 'He that
can apprehend and consider vice with all her baits and seeming
pleasures, and yet abstain, and yet distinguish, and yet prefer that
which is truly better, he is the true warfaring Christian.'
What he says of himself in reply to the base and scurrilous and utterly
unfounded charges against his private character is more than what Mark
Pattison truly characterizes as 'a superb and ingenuous egotism'; is
more than an _apologia pro vita sua_; it was also prompted by the
consideration that what he was agonizingly contending for in the cause
of civil, political, and religious liberty might suffer, if his private
character were not freed from the charges made against it. In the
extended autobiographical passage in the 'Second Defence of the People
of England,' he assigns two other reasons for acquitting himself of the
charges made against his private character, namely, 'that those
illustrious worthies, who are the objects of my praise, may know that
nothing could afflict me with more shame than to have any vices of mine
diminish the force or lessen the value of my panegyric upon them; and
that the people of England, whom fate or duty, or their own virtues,
have incited me to defend, may be convinced from the purity and
integrity of my life, that my defence, if it do not redound to their
honour, can never be considered as their disgrace.'
A noble motive nobly presented!
There are no authors in the literature more distinctly revealed in their
writings than is John Milton. His personality is felt in his every
production, poetical and prose, and felt almost as much in the earliest
as in the latest period of his authorship. And there is no epithet more
applicable to his personality than the epithet august. He is therefore
one of the most educating of authors, in the highest sense of the word,
that is, educating in the direction of sanctified character.
''Tis human fortune's happiest height to be
A spirit melodious, lucid, poised, and whole:
Second in order of felicity
I hold it, to have walked with such a soul.'
The prime value attaching to the prose works of Milton at the present
day is their fervent exposition of true freedom,—a freedom which
involves a deep sympathy with truth; a freedom which is induced by a
willing and, in its final result, a spontaneous obedience to one's
higher nature. Without such obedience no one can be truly free. Outward
freedom, so called, may only afford an opportunity to one with evil
inward tendencies to become, morally, an invertebrate. Lord Byron speaks
of his Lara as
'Left by his sire, too young such loss to know,
_Lord of himself; that heritage of woe_,
That fearful empire which the human breast
But holds to rob the heart within of rest!—
With none to check, and few to point in time
The thousand paths that slope the way to crime.'
There is more outward freedom at the present time than there was ever
before, perhaps, in the world's history, and the temptations which it
involves can be adequately resisted only by the subjective freedom which
Milton so strenuously advocated. His ideas of all kinds of true freedom
(explicit expressions of which have been brought together in the second
section of this book) need to be instilled into all young minds, first,
for their own intrinsic value, and, secondly, as a means—the sole
means—of checking the present and ever increasing tendency toward
unrestrained desires, toward what many mistake for true freedom, namely,
_license_. Of such, Milton says, in one of his sonnets,
'License they mean when they cry liberty;
For who loves that must first be wise and good.'
The passage on Discipline (pp. 108-111) from 'The Reason of Church
Government urged against Prelaty,' should be learned _by heart_ (in the
vital sense of the phrase, not in the sense of merely memorizing) by all
young people in our schools. Everything should be done to induce a
sympathetic assimilation on their part of the lofty utterances in this
passage on Discipline, 'whose golden surveying rod,' says Milton, 'marks
out and measures every quarter and circuit of New Jerusalem.'
The translations (not acknowledged in the text) of the two Latin poems
addressed to the poet's Anglo Italian friend, Charles Diodati ('_Elegia
Prima. Ad Carolum Diodatum_,' p. 28, and '_Elegia Sexta. Ad Carolum
Diodatum, ruri commorantem_,' p. 31), and of the Familiar Letters
('_Epistolæ Familiares_'), Nos. III.-X., XII., XIV., XXI., XXIX., and
XXXI. are by Dr. Masson. His translations of the latter are much closer
to the meaning and tone of the original than those by Robert Fellowes,
given in the Bohn edition of the prose works, which hardly warrant the
characterization of them by the editor, J. A. St. John, as 'the very
elegant translation of Mr. Fellowes, of Oxford, who, in most instances,
has happily and with much feeling entered into and expressed the views
of Milton.' The translation of No. XV. of the Familiar Letters, 'To
Leonard Philaras, Athenian,' is by my colleague, Professor Charles E.
Bennett.
Students who are sufficiently good Latin scholars should read Milton's
Latin poems in the original, especially the '_In Quintum Novembris: anno
ætatis 17_,' the '_Ad Patrem_,' and the '_Epitaphium Damonis_.' The '_In
Quintum Novembris_' (On the fifth of November, that is, the anniversary
of the discovery of the Gunpowder Plot) is described by Masson as 'one
of the very cleverest and most poetical of all Milton's youthful
productions, and certainly one of the most characteristic.' The
'_Epitaphium Damonis_' has been admirably edited with notes by C. S.
Jerram, M.A. Trin. Coll. Oxon., along with 'Lycidas.'
The student should first read carefully all the selections, prose and
poetical, without referring to the notes. Notes are a necessary evil,
and should not be read until after a requisite general impression has
been received from an independent reading; often two or more independent
readings should precede any attention to explanatory notes. Even such a
poem as Browning's 'The Ring and the Book,' abounding as it does in out
of the way allusions, difficult syntactical constructions, etc.,
requiring explanation, should be so read. The student would thus get a
better impression of the poem as a whole, and would derive from it a
greater pleasure (the pleasure resulting from the less interrupted
exercise of his higher faculties) than if he should read it at first
with the aid of abundant notes explanatory of details. A special
attention to the details should be given only after the reader has, in a
general way, taken in the articulating thought and the informing life of
the poem.
There are thousands of allusions in the 'Paradise Lost' which a reader
might not know, and yet be able to read the whole poem for the first
time and enjoy it, and, what is all-important, be uplifted by it,
without a single explanatory note.
The portrait of Milton is from that first drawn in crayons by William
Faithorne, and afterward engraved by him for the poet's 'History of
Britain,' published in 1670. Underneath the original engraving is the
inscription, '_Joannis Miltoni Effigies Ætat: 62. 1670. Gul. Faithorne
ad Vivum Delin. et Sculpsit_' (John Milton's effigy at the age of 62.
1670. Drawn from life and engraved by William Faithorne).
Faithorne was the most distinguished portrait artist and engraver of the
time. He appears to have especially excelled in crayon-drawing rather
than in painting. His numerous engravings are both from his own studies
and from those of other artists, especially of Vandyke. 'No one,' says
Masson, 'can desire a more impressive and authentic portrait of Milton
in his later life. The face is such as has been given to no other human
being; it was and is uniquely Milton's. Underneath the broad forehead
and arched temples there are the great rings of eye-socket, with the
blind, unblemished eyes in them, drawn straight upon you by your voice,
and speculating who and what you are; there is a severe composure in the
beautiful oval of the whole countenance, disturbed only by the singular
pouting round the rich mouth; and the entire expression is that of
English intrepidity mixed with unutterable sorrow.'
H. C.
CASCADILLA COTTAGE, July, 1899.
MILTON'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY
_made up of all the more important autobiographical passages contained
in his prose and poetical works_
It was found quite impossible to avoid somewhat of a jumble in bringing
together the many autobiographic passages scattered throughout Milton's
prose and poetical works. The passage in the 'Second Defence of the
People of England,' in reply to the scurrilous abuse and utterly
unfounded charges against his private character contained in the _Regii
Sanguinis Clamor ad Cœlum, adversus Parricidas Anglicanos_, 1652,
which occasioned the 'Second Defence,' covers a larger period of
Milton's life than any other, extending, as it does, from his birth to
the time of his writing the 'Second Defence,' published in 1654, Milton
being then in his forty-sixth year; and as there is an autobiographic
passage of some importance in the preface to the 'First Defence'
(published in 1651), this passage and that in the 'Second Defence' are
kept together and given first. In the former he expresses his sense of
the honor done him in his having been engaged to reply to the _Defensio
Regia pro Carolo I._, by Salmasius; and he evidently felt, and justly,
too, that no abler man could have been engaged for that important
function. The extract from 'A Defence of the People of England' is from
the translation ascribed by Milton's biographer, John Toland, to Mr.
Washington, a gentleman of the Temple, and that from the 'Second
Defence,' from the translation by Robert Fellowes, A.M., Oxon. These
are very free translations, and sometimes far from being adequate
representations of Milton's thought. It is much to be regretted that
Milton did not himself make an English translation, for the general
English reader, of these two noble Defences.
The other autobiographic passages are given, as far as may be, in their
chronological order,—that is, not always according to the dates of
their composition, but according to their order in Milton's life.
_From the Preface to 'A Defence of the English People'_
Although I fear, lest, if in defending the people of England,
I should be as copious in words, and empty of matter, as most
men think Salmasius has been in his defence of the king, I
might seem to deserve justly to be accounted a verbose and
silly defender; yet since no man thinks himself obliged to
make so much haste, though in the handling but of any ordinary
subject, as not to premise some introduction at least,
according as the weight of the subject requires; if I take the
same course in handling almost the greatest subject that ever
was (without being too tedious in it) I am in hopes of
attaining two things, which indeed I earnestly desire: the
one, not to be at all wanting, as far as in me lies, to this
most noble cause and most worthy to be recorded to all future
ages: the other, that I may appear to have myself avoided that
frivolousness of matter, and redundancy of words, which I
blame in my antagonist. For I am about to discourse of matters
neither inconsiderable nor common, but how a most potent king,
after he had trampled upon the laws of the nation, and given a
shock to its religion, and begun to rule at his own will and
pleasure, was at last subdued in the field by his own
subjects, who had undergone a long slavery under him; how
afterwards he was cast into prison, and when he gave no
ground, either by words or actions, to hope better things of
him, was finally by the supreme council of the kingdom
condemned to die, and beheaded before the very gates of the
royal palace. I shall likewise relate (which will much conduce
to the easing men's minds of a great superstition) by what
right, especially according to our law, this judgment was
given, and all these matters transacted; and shall easily
defend my valiant and worthy countrymen (who have extremely
well deserved of all subjects and nations in the world) from
the most wicked calumnies, both of domestic and foreign
railers, and especially from the reproaches of this most vain
and empty sophist, who sets up for a captain and ringleader to
all the rest. For what king's majesty sitting upon an exalted
throne, ever shone so brightly, as that of the people of
England then did, when, shaking off that old superstition,
which had prevailed a long time, they gave judgment upon the
king himself, or rather upon an enemy who had been their king,
caught as it were in a net by his own laws, (who alone of all
mortals challenged to himself impunity by a divine right,) and
scrupled not to inflict the same punishment upon him, being
guilty, which he would have inflicted upon any other? But why
do I mention these things as performed by the people, which
almost open their voice themselves, and testify the presence
of God throughout? who, as often as it seems good to his
infinite wisdom, uses to throw down proud and unruly kings,
exalting themselves above the condition of human nature, and
utterly to extirpate them and all their family. By his
manifest impulse being set at work to recover our almost lost
liberty, following him as our guide, and adoring the impresses
of his divine power manifested upon all occasions, we went on
in no obscure, but an illustrious passage, pointed out and
made plain to us by God himself. Which things, if I should so
much as hope by any diligence or ability of mine, such as it
is, to discourse of as I ought to do, and to commit them so to
writing, as that perhaps all nations and all ages may read
them, it would be a very vain thing in me. For what style can
be august and magnificent enough, what man has ability
sufficient to undertake so great a task? Since we find by
experience, that in so many ages as are gone over the world,
there has been but here and there a man found, who has been
able worthily to recount the actions of great heroes, and
potent states; can any man have so good an opinion of his own
talents, as to think himself capable of reaching these
glorious and wonderful works of Almighty God, by any language,
by any style of his? Which enterprise, though some of the most
eminent persons in our commonwealth have prevailed upon me by
their authority to undertake, and would have it be my business
to vindicate with my pen against envy and calumny (which are
proof against arms) those glorious performances of theirs,
(whose opinion of me I take as a very great honour, that they
should pitch upon me before others to be serviceable in this
kind of those most valiant deliverers of my native country;
and true it is, that from my very youth, I have been bent
extremely upon such sort of studies, as inclined me, if not to
do great things myself, at least to celebrate those that did,)
yet as having no confidence in any such advantages, I have
recourse to the divine assistance; and invoke the great and
holy God, the giver of all good gifts, that I may as
substantially, and as truly, discourse and refute the
sauciness and lies of this foreign declaimer, as our noble
generals piously and successfully by force of arms broke the
king's pride, and his unruly domineering, and afterwards put
an end to both by inflicting a memorable punishment upon
himself, and as thoroughly as a single person did with ease
but of late confute and confound the king himself, rising as
it were from the grave, and recommending himself to the people
in a book published after his death, with new artifices and
allurements of words and expressions. Which antagonist of
mine, though he be a foreigner, and, though he deny it a
thousand times over, but a poor grammarian; yet not contented
with a salary due to him in that capacity, chose to turn a
pragmatical coxcomb, and not only to intrude in state-affairs,
but into the affairs of a foreign state: though he brings
along with him neither modesty, nor understanding, nor any
other qualification requisite in so great an arbitrator, but
sauciness, and a little grammar only. Indeed if he had
published here, and in English, the same things as he has now
written in Latin, such as it is, I think no man would have
thought it worth while to return an answer to them, but would
partly despise them as common, and exploded over and over
already, and partly abhor them as sordid and tyrannical
maxims, not to be endured even by the most abject of slaves:
nay, men that have sided with the king, would have had these
thoughts of his book. But since he has swoln it to a
considerable bulk, and dispersed it amongst foreigners, who
are altogether ignorant of our affairs and constitution, it is
fit that they who mistake them should be better informed; and
that he, who is so very forward to speak ill of others, should
be treated in his own kind. If it be asked, why we did not
then attack him sooner? why we suffered him to triumph so
long, and pride himself in our silence? For others I am not to
answer; for myself I can boldly say, that I had neither words
nor arguments long to seek for the defence of so good a cause,
if I had enjoyed such a measure of health, as would have
endured the fatigue of writing. And being but weak in body, I
am forced to write by piecemeal, and break off almost every
hour, though the subject be such as requires an unintermitted
study and intenseness of mind. But though this bodily
indisposition may be a hindrance to me in setting forth the
just praises of my most worthy countrymen, who have been the
saviours of their native country, and whose exploits, worthy
of immortality, are already famous all the world over; yet I
hope it will be no difficult matter for me to defend them from
the insolence of this silly little scholar, and from that
saucy tongue of his, at least. Nature and laws would be in an
ill case, if slavery should find what to say for itself, and
liberty be mute; and if tyrants should find men to plead for
them, and they that can master and vanquish tyrants, should
not be able to find advocates. And it were a deplorable thing
indeed, if the reason mankind is endued withal, and which is
the gift of God, should not furnish more arguments for men's
preservation, for their deliverance, and, as much as the
nature of the thing will bear, for making them equal to one
another, than for their oppression, and for their utter ruin
under the domineering power of one single person. Let me
therefore enter upon this noble cause with a cheerfulness
grounded upon this assurance, that my adversary's cause is
maintained by nothing but fraud, fallacy, ignorance, and
barbarity; whereas mine has light, truth, reason, the practice
and the learning of the best ages of the world, on its side.
_From the 'Second Defence of the People of England in Reply to an
Anonymous Libel, entitled "The Cry of the Royal Blood to Heaven against
the English Parricides"'_
A grateful recollection of the divine goodness is the first of
human obligations; and extraordinary favours demand more
solemn and devout acknowledgments: with such acknowledgments I
feel it my duty to begin this work. First, because I was born
at a time when the virtue of my fellow-citizens, far exceeding
that of their progenitors in greatness of soul and vigour of
enterprise, having invoked Heaven to witness the justice of
their cause, and been clearly governed by its directions, has
succeeded in delivering the commonwealth from the most
grievous tyranny, and religion from the most ignominious
degradation. And next, because when there suddenly arose many
who, as is usual with the vulgar, basely calumniated the most
illustrious achievements, and when one eminent above the rest,
inflated with literary pride, and the zealous applauses of his
partisans, had in a scandalous publication, which was
particularly levelled against me, nefariously undertaken to
plead the cause of despotism, I, who was neither deemed
unequal to so renowned an adversary, nor to so great a
subject, was particularly selected by the deliverers of our
country, and by the general suffrage of the public, openly to
vindicate the rights of the English nation, and consequently
of liberty itself. Lastly, because in a matter of so much
moment, and which excited such ardent expectations, I did not
disappoint the hopes nor the opinions of my fellow-citizens;
while men of learning and eminence abroad honoured me with
unmingled approbation; while I obtained such a victory over my
opponent that, notwithstanding his unparalleled assurance, he
was obliged to quit the field with his courage broken and his
reputation lost; and for the three years which he lived
afterwards, much as he menaced and furiously as he raved, he
gave me no further trouble, except that he procured the paltry
aid of some despicable hirelings, and suborned some of his
silly and extravagant admirers to support him under the weight
of the unexpected and recent disgrace which he had
experienced. This will immediately appear. Such are the signal
favours which I ascribe to the divine beneficence, and which I
thought it right devoutly to commemorate, not only that I
might discharge a debt of gratitude, but particularly because
they seem auspicious to the success of my present undertaking.
For who is there, who does not identify the honour of his
country with his own? And what can conduce more to the beauty
or glory of one's country than the recovery not only of its
civil but its religious liberty?
* * * * *
. . . I can easily repel any charge which may be adduced
against me, either of want of courage, or want of zeal. For
though I did not participate in the toils or dangers of the
war, yet I was at the same time engaged in a service not less
hazardous to myself and more beneficial to my fellow-citizens;
nor, in the adverse turns of our affairs, did I ever betray
any symptoms of pusillanimity and dejection: or show myself
more afraid than became me of malice or of death: For since
from my youth I was devoted to the pursuits of literature, and
my mind had always been stronger than my body, I did not court
the labours of a camp, in which any common person would have
been of more service than myself, but resorted to that
employment in which my exertions were likely to be of most
avail. Thus, with the better part of my frame I contributed as
much as possible to the good of my country, and to the success
of the glorious cause in which we were engaged; and I thought
that if God willed the success of such glorious achievements,
it was equally agreeable to his will that there should be
others by whom those achievements should be recorded with
dignity and elegance; and that the truth, which had been
defended by arms, should also be defended by reason; which is
the best and only legitimate means of defending it. Hence,
while I applaud those who were victorious in the field, I will
not complain of the province which was assigned me; but rather
congratulate myself upon it, and thank the Author of all good
for having placed me in a station, which may be an object of
envy to others rather than of regret to myself. I am far from
wishing to make any vain or arrogant comparisons, or to speak
ostentatiously of myself; but, in a cause so great and
glorious, and particularly on an occasion when I am called by
the general suffrage to defend the very defenders of that
cause, I can hardly refrain from assuming a more lofty and
swelling tone than the simplicity of an exordium may seem to
justify: and much as I may be surpassed in the powers of
eloquence and copiousness of diction by the illustrious
orators of antiquity, yet the subject of which I treat was
never surpassed, in any age, in dignity or in interest. It has
excited such general and such ardent expectation, that I
imagine myself, not in the forum or on the rostra, surrounded
only by the people of Athens or of Rome, but about to address
in this, as I did in my former Defence, the whole collective
body of people, cities, states, and councils of the wise and
eminent, through the wide expanse of anxious and listening
Europe. I seem to survey, as from a towering height, the far
extended tracts of sea and land, and innumerable crowds of
spectators, betraying in their looks the liveliest interest,
and sensations the most congenial with my own. Here I behold
the stout and manly prowess of the Germans disdaining
servitude; there the generous and lively impetuosity of the
French; on this side, the calm and stately valour of the
Spaniard; on that, the composed and wary magnanimity of the
Italian. Of all the lovers of liberty and virtue, the
magnanimous and the wise, in whatever quarter they may be
found, some secretly favour, others openly approve; some greet
me with congratulations and applause; others, who had long
been proof against conviction, at last yield themselves
captive to the force of truth. Surrounded by congregated
multitudes, I now imagine that, from the columns of Hercules
to the Indian Ocean, I behold the nations of the earth
recovering that liberty which they so long had lost; and that
the people of this island are transporting to other countries
a plant of more beneficial qualities, and more noble growth,
than that which Triptolemus is reported to have carried from
region to region; that they are disseminating the blessings of
civilization and freedom among cities, kingdoms, and nations.
Nor shall I approach unknown, nor perhaps unloved, if it be
told that I am the same person who engaged in single combat
that fierce advocate of despotism; till then reputed
invincible in the opinion of many, and in his own conceit; who
insolently challenged us and our armies to the combat; but
whom, while I repelled his virulence, I silenced with his own
weapons; and over whom, if I may trust to the opinions of
impartial judges, I gained a complete and glorious victory.
That this is the plain unvarnished fact appears from this:
that, after the most noble queen of Sweden, than whom there
neither is nor ever was a personage more attached to
literature and to learned men, had invited Salmasius or
Salmatia (for to which sex he belonged is a matter of
uncertainty) to her court, where he was received with great
distinction, my Defence suddenly surprised him in the midst of
his security. It was generally read, and by the queen among
the rest, who, attentive to the dignity of her station, let
the stranger experience no diminution of her former kindness
and munificence. But, with respect to the rest, if I may
assert what has been often told, and was matter of public
notoriety, such a change was instantly effected in the public
sentiment, that he, who but yesterday flourished in the
highest degree of favour, seemed to-day to wither in neglect;
and soon after receiving permission to depart, he left it
doubtful among many whether he were more honoured when he
came, or more disgraced when he went away; and even in other
places it is clear, that it occasioned no small loss to his
reputation; and all this I have mentioned, not from any futile
motives of vanity or ostentation, but that I might clearly
show, as I proposed in the beginning, what momentous reasons I
had for commencing this work with an effusion of gratitude to
the Father of the universe. Such a preface was most honourable
and appropriate, in which I might prove, by an enumeration of
particulars, that I had not been without my share of human
misery; but that I had, at the same time, experienced singular
marks of the divine regard; that in topics of the highest
concern, the most connected with the exigencies of my country,
and the most beneficial to civil and religious liberty; the
supreme wisdom and beneficence had invigorated and enlarged my
faculties, to defend the dearest interests, not merely of one
people, but of the whole human race, against the enemies of
human liberty; as it were in a full concourse of all the
nations on the earth: and I again invoke the same Almighty
Being, that I may still be able, with the same integrity, the
same diligence, and the same success, to defend those actions
which have been so gloriously achieved; while I vindicate the
authors as well as myself, whose name has been associated with
theirs, not so much for the sake of honour as disgrace, from
unmerited ignominy and reproach.
* * * * *
But the conflict between me and Salmasius is now finally
terminated by his death; and I will not write against the
dead; nor will I reproach him with the loss of life as he did
me with the loss of sight; though there are some who impute
his death to the penetrating severity of my strictures, which
he rendered only the more sharp by his endeavours to resist.
When he saw the work which he had in hand proceed slowly on,
the time of reply elapsed, the public curiosity subsided, his
fame marred, and his reputation lost; the favour of the
princes, whose cause he had so ill defended, alienated, he was
destroyed, after three years of grief, rather by the force of
depression than disease.
* * * * *
If I inveigh against tyrants, what is this to kings? whom I am
far from associating with tyrants. As much as an honest man
differs from a rogue, so much I contend that a king differs
from a tyrant. Whence it is clear, that a tyrant is so far
from being a king, that he is always in direct opposition to a
king. And he who peruses the records of history, will find
that more kings have been subverted by tyrants than by their
subjects. He, therefore, who would authorize the destruction
of tyrants, does not authorize the destruction of kings, but
of the most inveterate enemies to kings.
* * * * *
Let us now come to the charges which were brought against
myself. Is there anything reprehensible in my manners or my
conduct? Surely nothing. What no one, not totally divested of
all generous sensibility, would have done, he reproaches me
with want of beauty and loss of sight.
'Monstrum horrendum, informe, ingens, cui lumen
ademptum.'
I certainly never supposed that I should have been obliged to
enter into a competition for beauty with the Cyclops; but he
immediately corrects himself, and says, 'though not indeed
huge, for there cannot be a more spare, shrivelled, and
bloodless form.' It is of no moment to say anything of
personal appearance, yet lest (as the Spanish vulgar,
implicitly confiding in the relations of their priests,
believe of heretics) any one, from the representations of my
enemies, should be led to imagine that I have either the head
of a dog, or the horn of a rhinoceros, I will say something on
the subject, that I may have an opportunity of paying my
grateful acknowledgments to the Deity, and of refuting the
most shameless lies. I do not believe that I was ever once
noted for deformity, by any one who ever saw me; but the
praise of beauty I am not anxious to obtain. My stature
certainly is not tall; but it rather approaches the middle
than the diminutive. Yet what if it were diminutive, when so
many men, illustrious both in peace and war, have been the
same? And how can that be called diminutive, which is great
enough for every virtuous achievement? Nor, though very thin,
was I ever deficient in courage or in strength; and I was wont
constantly to exercise myself in the use of the broadsword, as
long as it comported with my habit and my years. Armed with
this weapon, as I usually was, I should have thought myself
quite a match for any one, though much stronger than myself;
and I felt perfectly secure against the assault of any open
enemy. At this moment I have the same courage, the same
strength, though not the same eyes; yet so little do they
betray any external appearance of injury, that they are as
unclouded and bright as the eyes of those who most distinctly
see. In this instance alone I am a dissembler against my will.
My face, which is said to indicate a total privation of blood,
is of a complexion entirely opposite to the pale and the
cadaverous; so that, though I am more than forty years old,
there is scarcely any one to whom I do not appear ten years
younger than I am; and the smoothness of my skin is not, in
the least, affected by the wrinkles of age. If there be one
particle of falsehood in this relation, I should deservedly
incur the ridicule of many thousands of my countrymen, and
even many foreigners to whom I am personally known. But if he,
in a matter so foreign to his purpose, shall be found to have
asserted so many shameless and gratuitous falsehoods, you may
the more readily estimate the quantity of his veracity on
other topics. Thus much necessity compelled me to assert
concerning my personal appearance. Respecting yours, though I
have been informed that it is most insignificant and
contemptible, a perfect mirror of the worthlessness of your
character and the malevolence of your heart, I say nothing,
and no one will be anxious that anything should be said. I
wish that I could with equal facility refute what this
barbarous opponent has said of my blindness; but I cannot do
it; and I must submit to the affliction. It is not so wretched
to be blind, as it is not to be capable of enduring blindness.
But why should I not endure a misfortune which it behooves
everyone to be prepared to endure if it should happen; which
may, in the common course of things, happen to any man; and
which has been known to happen to the most distinguished and
virtuous persons in history? Shall I mention those wise and
ancient bards, whose misfortunes the gods are said to have
compensated by superior endowments, and whom men so much
revered, that they chose rather to impute their want of sight
to the injustice of heaven than to their own want of innocence
or virtue? What is reported of the Augur Tiresias is well
known; of whom Apollonius sung thus in his Argonautica:
'To men he dared the will divine disclose,
Nor feared what Jove might in his wrath impose.
The gods assigned him age, without decay,
But snatched the blessing of his sight away.'
But God himself is truth; in propagating which, as men display
a greater integrity and zeal, they approach nearer to the
similitude of God, and possess a greater portion of his love.
We cannot suppose the deity envious of truth, or unwilling
that it should be freely communicated to mankind. The loss of
sight, therefore, which this inspired sage, who was so eager
in promoting knowledge among men, sustained, cannot be
considered as a judicial punishment. Or shall I mention those
worthies who were as distinguished for wisdom in the cabinet
as for valour in the field? And first, Timoleon of Corinth,
who delivered his city and all Sicily from the yoke of
slavery; than whom there never lived in any age a more
virtuous man or a more incorrupt statesman: Next Appius
Claudius, whose discreet counsels in the senate, though they
could not restore sight to his own eyes, saved Italy from the
formidable inroads of Pyrrhus: then Cæcilius Metellus the
high-priest, who lost his sight, while he saved, not only the
city, but the palladium, the protection of the city, and the
most sacred relics, from the destruction of the flames. On
other occasions Providence has indeed given conspicuous proofs
of its regard for such singular exertions of patriotism and
virtue; what, therefore, happened to so great and so good a
man, I can hardly place in the catalogue of misfortunes. Why
should I mention others of later times, as Dandolo of Venice,
the incomparable Doge; or Zisca, the bravest leader of the
Bohemians, and the champion of the cross; or Jerome Zanchius,
and some other theologians of the highest reputation? For it
is evident that the patriarch Isaac, than whom no man ever
enjoyed more of the divine regard, lived blind for many years;
and perhaps also his son Jacob, who was equally an object of
the divine benevolence. And in short, did not our Saviour
himself clearly declare that that poor man whom he restored to
sight had not been born blind, either on account of his own
sins or those of his progenitors? And with respect to myself,
though I have accurately examined my conduct, and scrutinized
my soul, I call thee, O God, the searcher of hearts, to
witness, that I am not conscious, either in the more early or
in the later periods of my life, of having committed any
enormity which might deservedly have marked me out as a fit
object for such a calamitous visitation. But since my enemies
boast that this affliction is only a retribution for the
transgressions of my pen, I again invoke the Almighty to
witness, that I never, at any time, wrote anything which I did
not think agreeable to truth, to justice, and to piety. This
was my persuasion then, and I feel the same persuasion now.
Nor was I ever prompted to such exertions by the influence of
ambition, by the lust of lucre or of praise; it was only by
the conviction of duty and the feeling of patriotism, a
disinterested passion for the extension of civil and religious
liberty. Thus, therefore, when I was publicly solicited to
write a reply to the Defence of the royal cause, when I had to
contend with the pressure of sickness, and with the
apprehension of soon losing the sight of my remaining eye, and
when my medical attendants clearly announced, that if I did
engage in the work, it would be irreparably lost, their
premonitions caused no hesitation and inspired no dismay. I
would not have listened to the voice even of Æsculapius
himself from the shrine of Epidaurus, in preference to the
suggestions of the heavenly monitor within my breast; my
resolution was unshaken, though the alternative was either the
loss of my sight, or the desertion of my duty: and I called to
mind those two destinies, which the oracle of Delphi announced
to the son of Thetis:
'I by my Goddess-mother have been warned,
The silver-footed Thetis, that o'er me
A double chance of destiny impends:
If here remaining, round the walls of Troy
I wage the war, I ne'er shall see my home,
But then undying glory shall be mine:
If I return, and see my native land,
My glory all is gone; but length of life
Shall then be mine, and death be long deferred.'
—_Iliad_, ix. 410-416.
I considered that many had purchased a less good by a greater
evil, the meed of glory by the loss of life; but that I might
procure great good by little suffering; that though I am
blind, I might still discharge the most honourable duties, the
performance of which, as it is something more durable than
glory, ought to be an object of superior admiration and
esteem; I resolved, therefore, to make the short interval of
sight, which was left me to enjoy, as beneficial as possible
to the public interest. Thus it is clear by what motives I was
governed in the measures which I took, and the losses which I
sustained. Let then the calumniators of the divine goodness
cease to revile, or to make me the object of their
superstitious imaginations. Let them consider, that my
situation, such as it is, is neither an object of my shame nor
my regret, that my resolutions are too firm to be shaken, that
I am not depressed by any sense of the divine displeasure;
that, on the other hand, in the most momentous periods, I have
had full experience of the divine favour and protection; and
that, in the solace and the strength which have been infused
into me from above, I have been enabled to do the will of God;
that I may oftener think on what he has bestowed, than on what
he has withheld; that, in short, I am unwilling to exchange my
consciousness of rectitude with that of any other person; and
that I feel the recollection a treasured store of tranquillity
and delight. But, if the choice were necessary, I would, sir,
prefer my blindness to yours; yours is a cloud spread over the
mind, which darkens both the light of reason and of
conscience; mine keeps from my view only the coloured surfaces
of things, while it leaves me at liberty to contemplate the
beauty and stability of virtue and of truth. How many things
are there besides which I would not willingly see; how many
which I must see against my will; and how few which I feel any
anxiety to see! There is, as the apostle has remarked, a way
to strength through weakness. Let me then be the most feeble
creature alive, as long as that feebleness serves to
invigorate the energies of my rational and immortal spirit; as
long as in that obscurity, in which I am enveloped, the light
of the divine presence more clearly shines, then, in
proportion as I am weak, I shall be invincibly strong; and in
proportion as I am blind, I shall more clearly see. Oh, that
I may thus be perfected by feebleness, and irradiated by
obscurity! And, indeed, in my blindness, I enjoy in no
inconsiderable degree the favour of the Deity, who regards me
with more tenderness and compassion in proportion as I am able
to behold nothing but himself. Alas! for him who insults me,
who maligns and merits public execration! For the divine law
not only shields me from injury, but almost renders me too
sacred to attack; not indeed so much from the privation of my
sight, as from the overshadowing of those heavenly wings which
seem to have occasioned this obscurity; and which, when
occasioned, he is wont to illuminate with an interior light,
more precious and more pure. To this I ascribe the more tender
assiduities of my friends, their soothing attentions, their
kind visits, their reverential observances; . . . This
extraordinary kindness which I experience, cannot be any
fortuitous combination; and friends, such as mine, do not
suppose that all the virtues of a man are contained in his
eyes. Nor do the persons of principal distinction in the
commonwealth suffer me to be bereaved of comfort, when they
see me bereaved of sight, amid the exertions which I made, the
zeal which I showed, and the dangers which I run for the
liberty which I love. But, soberly reflecting on the
casualties of human life, they show me favour and indulgence,
as to a soldier who has served his time, and kindly concede to
me an exemption from care and toil. They do not strip me of
the badges of honour which I have once worn; they do not
deprive me of the places of public trust to which I have been
appointed; they do not abridge my salary or emoluments; which,
though I may not do so much to deserve as I did formerly, they
are too considerate and too kind to take away; and, in short,
they honour me as much as the Athenians did those whom they
determined to support at the public expense in the Prytaneum.
Thus, while both God and man unite in solacing me under the
weight of my affliction, let no one lament my loss of sight
in so honourable a cause. And let me not indulge in unavailing
grief, or want the courage either to despise the revilers of
my blindness, or the forbearance easily to pardon the offence.
* * * * *
I must crave the indulgence of the reader if I have said
already, or shall say hereafter, more of myself than I wish to
say; that, if I cannot prevent the blindness of my eyes, the
oblivion or the defamation of my name, I may at least rescue
my life from that species of obscurity, which is the associate
of unprincipled depravity. This it will be necessary for me to
do on more accounts than one; first, that so many good and
learned men among the neighbouring nations, who read my works,
may not be induced by this fellow's calumnies to alter the
favourable opinion which they have formed of me; but may be
persuaded that I am not one who ever disgraced beauty of
sentiment by deformity of conduct, or the maxims of a freeman
by the actions of a slave; and that the whole tenor of my life
has, by the grace of God, hitherto been unsullied by enormity
or crime. Next, that those illustrious worthies, who are the
objects of my praise, may know that nothing could afflict me
with more shame than to have any vices of mine diminish the
force or lessen the value of my panegyric upon them; and,
lastly, that the people of England, whom fate, or duty, or
their own virtues, have incited me to defend, may be convinced
from the purity and integrity of my life, that my defence, if
it do not redound to their honour, can never be considered as
their disgrace. I will now mention who and whence I am. I was
born in London, of an honest family; my father was
distinguished by the undeviating integrity of his life; my
mother, by the esteem in which she was held, and the alms
which she bestowed. My father destined me from a child to the
pursuits of literature; and my appetite for knowledge was so
voracious, that, from twelve years of age, I hardly ever left
my studies, or went to bed before midnight. This primarily led
to my loss of sight. My eyes were naturally weak, and I was
subject to frequent headaches; which, however, could not chill
the ardour of my curiosity, or retard the progress of my
improvement. My father had me daily instructed in the
grammar-school, and by other masters at home. He then, after I
had acquired a proficiency in various languages, and had made
a considerable progress in philosophy, sent me to the
University of Cambridge. Here I passed seven years in the
usual course of instruction and study, with the approbation of
the good, and without any stain upon my character, till I took
the degree of Master of Arts. After this I did not, as this
miscreant feigns, run away into Italy, but of my own accord
retired to my father's house, whither I was accompanied by the
regrets of most of the fellows of the college, who showed me
no common marks of friendship and esteem. On my father's
estate, where he had determined to pass the remainder of his
days, I enjoyed an interval of uninterrupted leisure, which I
entirely devoted to the perusal of the Greek and Latin
classics; though I occasionally visited the metropolis, either
for the sake of purchasing books, or of learning something new
in mathematics or in music, in which I, at that time, found a
source of pleasure and amusement. In this manner I spent five
years till my mother's death. I then became anxious to visit
foreign parts, and particularly Italy. My father gave me his
permission, and I left home with one servant. On my departure,
the celebrated Henry Wotton, who had long been king James's
ambassador at Venice, gave me a signal proof of his regard, in
an elegant letter which he wrote, breathing not only the
warmest friendship, but containing some maxims of conduct
which I found very useful in my travels. The noble Thomas
Scudamore, king Charles's ambassador, to whom I carried
letters of recommendation, received me most courteously at
Paris. His lordship gave me a card of introduction to the
learned Hugo Grotius, at that time ambassador from the queen
of Sweden to the French court; whose acquaintance I anxiously
desired, and to whose house I was accompanied by some of his
lordship's friends. A few days after, when I set out for
Italy, he gave me letters to the English merchants on my
route, that they might show me any civilities in their power.
Taking ship at Nice, I arrived at Genoa, and afterwards
visited Leghorn, Pisa, and Florence. In the latter city, which
I have always more particularly esteemed for the elegance of
its dialect, its genius, and its taste, I stopped about two
months; when I contracted an intimacy with many persons of
rank and learning; and was a constant attendant at their
literary parties; a practice which prevails there, and tends
so much to the diffusion of knowledge, and the preservation of
friendship. No time will ever abolish the agreeable
recollections which I cherish of Jacopo Gaddi, Carlo Dati,
Frescobaldi, Coltellini, Bonmattei, Chimentelli, Francini, and
many others. From Florence I went to Siena, thence to Rome,
where, after I had spent about two months in viewing the
antiquities of that renowned city, where I experienced the
most friendly attentions from Lucas Holstenius, and other
learned and ingenious men, I continued my route to Naples.
There I was introduced by a certain recluse, with whom I had
travelled from Rome, to Giovanni Battista Manso, marquis of
Villa, a nobleman of distinguished rank and authority, to whom
Torquato Tasso, the illustrious poet, inscribed his book on
friendship. During my stay, he gave me singular proofs of his
regard: he himself conducted me around the city, and to the
palace of the viceroy; and more than once paid me a visit at
my lodgings. On my departure he gravely apologized for not
having shown me more civility, which he said he had been
restrained from doing, because I had spoken with so little
reserve on matters of religion. When I was preparing to pass
over into Sicily and Greece, the melancholy intelligence which
I received of the civil commotions in England made me alter my
purpose; for I thought it base to be travelling for amusement
abroad, while my fellow-citizens were fighting for liberty at
home. While I was on my way back to Rome, some merchants
informed me that the English Jesuits had formed a plot against
me if I returned to Rome, because I had spoken too freely on
religion; for it was a rule which I laid down to myself in
those places, never to be the first to begin any conversation
on religion; but if any questions were put to me concerning my
faith, to declare it without any reserve or fear. I,
nevertheless, returned to Rome. I took no steps to conceal
either my person or my character; and for about the space of
two months I again openly defended, as I had done before, the
reformed religion in the very metropolis of popery. By the
favour of God, I got safe back to Florence, where I was
received with as much affection as if I had returned to my
native country. There I stopped as many months as I had done
before, except that I made an excursion for a few days to
Lucca; and, crossing the Apennines, passed through Bologna and
Ferrara to Venice. After I had spent a month in surveying the
curiosities of this city, and had put on board a ship the
books which I had collected in Italy, I proceeded through
Verona and Milan, and along the Leman lake to Geneva. The
mention of this city brings to my recollection the slandering
More, and makes me again call the Deity to witness, that in
all those places in which vice meets with so little
discouragement, and is practised with so little shame, I never
once deviated from the paths of integrity and virtue, and
perpetually reflected that, though my conduct might escape the
notice of men, it could not elude the inspection of God. At
Geneva I held daily conferences with John Diodati, the
learned professor of Theology. Then pursuing my former route
through France, I returned to my native country, after an
absence of one year and about three months; at the time when
Charles, having broken the peace, was renewing what is called
the episcopal war with the Scots, in which the royalists being
routed in the first encounter, and the English being
universally and justly disaffected, the necessity of his
affairs at last obliged him to convene a parliament. As soon
as I was able, I hired a spacious house in the city for myself
and my books; where I again with rapture renewed my literary
pursuits, and where I calmly awaited the issue of the contest,
which I trusted to the wise conduct of Providence, and to the
courage of the people. The vigour of the parliament had begun
to humble the pride of the bishops. As long as the liberty of
speech was no longer subject to control, all mouths began to
be opened against the bishops; some complained of the vices of
the individuals, others of those of the order. They said that
it was unjust that they alone should differ from the model of
other reformed churches; that the government of the church
should be according to the pattern of other churches, and
particularly the word of God. This awakened all my attention
and my zeal. I saw that a way was opening for the
establishment of real liberty; that the foundation was laying
for the deliverance of man from the yoke of slavery and
superstition; that the principles of religion, which were the
first objects of our care, would exert a salutary influence on
the manners and constitution of the republic; and as I had
from my youth studied the distinctions between religious and
civil rights, I perceived that if I ever wished to be of use,
I ought at least not to be wanting to my country, to the
church, and to so many of my fellow-Christians, in a crisis of
so much danger; I therefore determined to relinquish the other
pursuits in which I was engaged, and to transfer the whole
force of my talents and my industry to this one important
object. I accordingly wrote two books to a friend concerning
the reformation of the church of England. Afterwards, when two
bishops of superior distinction vindicated their privileges
against some principal ministers, I thought that on those
topics, to the consideration of which I was led solely by my
love of truth, and my reverence for Christianity, I should not
probably write worse than those who were contending only for
their own emoluments and usurpations. I therefore answered the
one in two books, of which the first is inscribed, Concerning
Prelatical Episcopacy, and the other Concerning the Mode of
Ecclesiastical Government; and I replied to the other in some
Animadversions, and soon after in an Apology. On this occasion
it was supposed that I brought a timely succour to the
ministers, who were hardly a match for the eloquence of their
opponents; and from that time I was actively employed in
refuting any answers that appeared. When the bishops could no
longer resist the multitude of their assailants, I had leisure
to turn my thoughts to other subjects; to the promotion of
real and substantial liberty; which is rather to be sought
from within than from without; and whose existence depends,
not so much on the terror of the sword, as on sobriety of
conduct and integrity of life. When, therefore, I perceived
that there were three species of liberty which are essential
to the happiness of social life—religious, domestic, and
civil; and as I had already written concerning the first, and
the magistrates were strenuously active in obtaining the
third, I determined to turn my attention to the second, or the
domestic species. As this seemed to involve three material
questions, the conditions of the conjugal tie, the education
of the children, and the free publication of the thoughts, I
made them objects of distinct consideration. I explained my
sentiments, not only concerning the solemnization of the
marriage, but the dissolution, if circumstances rendered it
necessary; and I drew my arguments from the divine law, which
Christ did not abolish, or publish another more grievous than
that of Moses. I stated my own opinions, and those of others,
concerning the exclusive exception of fornication, which our
illustrious Selden has since, in his Hebrew Wife, more
copiously discussed; for he in vain makes a vaunt of liberty
in the senate or in the forum, who languishes under the vilest
servitude, to an inferior at home. On this subject, therefore,
I published some books which were more particularly necessary
at that time, when man and wife were often the most inveterate
foes, when the man often staid to take care of his children at
home, while the mother of the family was seen in the camp of
the enemy, threatening death and destruction to her husband. I
then discussed the principles of education in a summary
manner, but sufficiently copious for those who attend
seriously to the subject; than which nothing can be more
necessary to principle the minds of men in virtue, the only
genuine source of political and individual liberty, the only
true safeguard of states, the bulwark of their prosperity and
renown. Lastly, I wrote my Areopagitica, in order to deliver
the press from the restraints with which it was encumbered;
that the power of determining what was true and what was
false, what ought to be published and what to be suppressed,
might no longer be entrusted to a few illiterate and illiberal
individuals, who refused their sanction to any work which
contained views or sentiments at all above the level of the
vulgar superstition. On the last species of civil liberty, I
said nothing, because I saw that sufficient attention was paid
to it by the magistrates; nor did I write anything on the
prerogative of the crown, till the king, voted an enemy by the
parliament, and vanquished in the field, was summoned before
the tribunal which condemned him to lose his head. But when,
at length, some Presbyterian ministers, who had formerly been
the most bitter enemies to Charles, became jealous of the
growth of the Independents, and of their ascendency in the
parliament, most tumultuously clamoured against the sentence,
and did all in their power to prevent the execution, though
they were not angry, so much on account of the act itself, as
because it was not the act of their party; and when they dared
to affirm, that the doctrine of the protestants, and of all
the reformed churches, was abhorrent to such an atrocious
proceeding against kings; I thought that it became me to
oppose such a glaring falsehood; and accordingly, without any
immediate or personal application to Charles, I showed, in an
abstract consideration of the question, what might lawfully be
done against tyrants; and in support of what I advanced,
produced the opinions of the most celebrated divines; while I
vehemently inveighed against the egregious ignorance or
effrontery of men, who professed better things, and from whom
better things might have been expected. That book did not make
its appearance till after the death of Charles; and was
written rather to reconcile the minds of the people to the
event, than to discuss the legitimacy of that particular
sentence which concerned the magistrates, and which was
already executed. Such were the fruits of my private studies,
which I gratuitously presented to the church and to the state;
and for which I was recompensed by nothing but impunity;
though the actions themselves procured me peace of conscience,
and the approbation of the good; while I exercised that
freedom of discussion which I loved. Others, without labour or
desert, got possession of honours and emoluments; but no one
ever knew me either soliciting anything myself or through the
medium of my friends; ever beheld me in a supplicating posture
at the doors of the senate, or the levees of the great. I
usually kept myself secluded at home, where my own property,
part of which had been withheld during the civil commotions,
and part of which had been absorbed in the oppressive
contributions which I had to sustain, afforded me a scanty
subsistence. When I was released from these engagements, and
thought that I was about to enjoy an interval of uninterrupted
ease, I turned my thoughts to a continued history of my
country, from the earliest times to the present period. I had
already finished four books, when, after the subversion of the
monarchy, and the establishment of a republic, I was surprised
by an invitation from the council of state, who desired my
services in the office for foreign affairs. A book appeared
soon after, which was ascribed to the king, and contained the
most invidious charges against the parliament. I was ordered
to answer it; and opposed the Iconoclast to his Icon. I did
not insult over fallen majesty, as is pretended; I only
preferred queen Truth to king Charles. The charge of insult,
which I saw that the malevolent would urge, I was at some
pains to remove in the beginning of the work; and as often as
possible in other places. Salmasius then appeared, to whom
they were not, as More says, long in looking about for an
opponent, but immediately appointed me, who happened at the
time to be present in the council. I have thus, sir, given
some account of myself, in order to stop your mouth, and to
remove any prejudices which your falsehoods and
misrepresentations might cause even good men to entertain
against me. I tell thee then, thou mass of corruption, to hold
thy peace; for the more you malign, the more you will compel
me to confute; which will only serve to render your iniquity
more glaring, and my integrity more manifest.
_To Charles Diodati, Milton's schoolfellow at St. Paul's School, and his
dearest friend_
At length, dear friend, your letter has reached me, and the
messenger-paper has brought me your words—brought me them
from the western shore of Chester's Dee, where with prone
stream it seeks the Vergivian wave. Much, believe me, it
delights me that foreign lands have nurtured a heart so loving
of ours, and a head so faithfully mine; and that a distant
part of the country now owes me my sprightly companion,
whence, however, it means soon, on being summoned, to send him
back. Me at present that city contains which the Thames washes
with its ebbing wave; and me, not unwilling, my father's house
now possesses. At present it is not my care to revisit the
reedy Cam; nor does the love of my forbidden rooms yet cause
me grief (_nec dudum vetiti me laris angit amor_). Nor do
naked fields please me, where soft shades are not to be had.
How ill that place suits the votaries of Apollo! Nor am I in
the humour still to bear the threats of a harsh master (_duri
minas perferre magistri_), and other things not to be
submitted to by my genius (_cæteraque ingenio non subeunda
meo_). If this be exile (_si sit hoc exilium_), to have gone
to my father's house, and, free from cares, to be pursuing
agreeable relaxations, then certainly I refuse neither the
name nor the lot of a fugitive (_non ego vel profugi nomen
sortemque recuso_), and gladly I enjoy the condition of exile
(_lætus et exilii conditione fruor_). Oh that that poet, the
tearful exile in the Pontic territory had never endured worse
things! Then had he nothing yielded to Ionian Homer, nor would
the supreme reputation of having surpassed him be yours, O
Maro! For it is in my power to give my leisure up to the
placid Muses; and books, which are my life, have me all to
themselves. When I am wearied, the pomp of the winding theatre
takes me hence, and the garrulous stage calls me to its noisy
applauses—whether it be the wary old gentleman that is heard,
or the prodigal heir; whether the wooer, or the soldier with
his helmet doffed, is on the boards, or the lawyer, prosperous
with a ten years' lawsuit, is mouthing forth his gibberish to
the unlearned forum. Often the wily servant is abetting the
lover-son, and at every turn cheating the very nose of the
stiff father; often there the maiden, wondering at her new
sensations, knows not what love is, and, while she knows not,
loves. Or, again, furious Tragedy shakes her bloody sceptre
and rolls her eyes, with dishevelled locks, and it is a pain
to look, and yet it is a pleasure to have looked and been
pained; for sometimes there is a sweet bitterness in tears. Or
the unhappy boy leaves his untasted joys, and falls off, a
pitiful object, from his broken love; or the fierce avenger of
crime recrosses the Styx from the shades, perturbing guilty
souls with his funeral torch. Or the house of Pelops or that
of noble Ilium is in grief, or the palace of Creon expiates
its incestuous ancestry. But not always within doors, nor even
in the city, do we mope; nor does the season of spring pass by
unused by us. The grove also planted with thick elms, has our
company, and the noble shade of a suburban neighborhood. Very
often here, as stars breathing forth mild flames, you may see
troops of maidens passing by. Ah! how often have I seen the
wonders of a worthy form, which might even repair the old age
of Jove! Ah! how often have I seen eyes surpassing all gems
and whatever lights revolve round either pole; and necks twice
whiter than the arms of living Pelops, and than the way which
flows tinged with pure nectar; and the exquisite grace of the
forehead; and the trembling hair which cheating love spreads
as his golden nets; and the inviting cheeks, compared with
which hyacinthine purple is poor, and the very blush, Adonis,
of thy own flower! . . . But for me, while the forbearance of
the blind boy allows it, I prepare as soon as possible to
leave these happy walls, and, using the help of divine
all-heal, to flee far from the infamous dwellings of the
sorceress Circe. It is fixed that I do go back to the rushy
marshes of Cam, and once more approach the murmur of the
hoarse-murmuring school. Meanwhile accept the little gift of
your faithful friend, and these few words forced into
alternate measures.
_To Alexander Gill, Jr._ (_Familiar Letters_, No. III.)
. . . Indeed, every time I recollect your almost constant
conversations with me (which even in this Athens, the
University itself, I long after and miss), I think
immediately, and not without grief, what a quantity of benefit
my absence from you has cheated me of,—me who never left
your company without a manifest increase and ἐπίδοσις of
literary knowledge, just as if I had been to some emporium of
learning. Truly, amongst us here, as far as I know, there are
hardly one or two that do not fly off unfeathered to Theology
while all but rude and uninitiated in either Philology or
Philosophy,—content also with the slightest possible touch of
Theology itself, just as much as may suffice for sticking
together a little sermon anyhow, and stitching it over with
worn patches obtained promiscuously: a fact giving reason for
the dread that by degrees there may break in among our clergy
the priestly ignorance of a former age. For myself, finding
almost no real companions in study here, I should certainly be
looking straight back to London, were I not meditating a
retirement during this summer vacation into a deep literary
leisure and a period of hiding, so to speak, in the bowers of
the Muses. But, as this is your own daily practice, I think
it almost a crime to interrupt you longer with my din at
present. Farewell.
CAMBRIDGE, July 2, 1628.
_To Thomas Young._ (_Familiar Letters_, No. IV.)
. . . Having been invited to your part of the country, as soon
as spring is a little advanced, I will gladly come, to enjoy
the delights of the season, and not less of your conversation,
and will withdraw myself from the din of town for a while to
your Stoa of the Iceni, as to that most celebrated Porch of
Zeno or the Tusculan Villa of Cicero, where you, with moderate
means but regal spirit, like some Serranus or Curius, placidly
reign in your little farm, and, contemning fortune, hold, as
it were, a triumph over riches, ambition, pomp, luxury, and
whatever the herd of men admire and are marked by. . . .
CAMBRIDGE, July 21, 1628.
_To Charles Diodati_,
making a stay in the country, who, having written to the author on the
13th of December, and asked him to excuse his verses, if they were less
good than usual, on the ground that, in the midst of the festivities
with which he had been received by his friends, he was unable to give a
sufficiently prosperous attention to the Muses, had the following reply:
. . . You seem to be enjoying yourself rarely. How well you
describe the feasts, and the merry December and preparations
for Christmas, and the cups of French wine round the gay
hearth! Why do you complain that poesy is absent from these
festivities? Festivity and poetry are surely not
incompatible. . . . One sees the triple influence of Bacchus,
Apollo, and Ceres, in the verses you have sent me. And, then,
have you not music—the harp lightly touched by nimble hands,
and the lute giving time to the fair ones as they dance in the
old tapestried room? Believe me, where the ivory keys leap,
and the accompanying dance goes round the perfumed hall, there
will the Song-god be. But let me not go too far. Light Elegy
is the care of many gods, and calls any one of them by turns
to her assistance—Bacchus, Erato, Ceres, Venus, and little
Cupid besides. To poets of this order, therefore, conviviality
is allowable; and they may often indulge in draughts of good
old wine. _But the man who speaks of high matters—the heaven
of the full-grown Jove, and pious heroes, and demigod leaders
of men, the man who now sings the holy counsels of the gods
above, and now the subterranean realms guarded by the fierce
dog—let him live sparely, after the manner of the Samian
master; let herbs afford him his innocent diet, let clear
water in a beechen cup stand near him, and let him drink sober
draughts from a pure fountain! To this be there added a youth
chaste and free from guilt, and rigid morals, and hands
without stain. Being such, thou shalt rise up, glittering in
sacred raiment and purified by lustral waters, an augur about
to go into the presence of the unoffended gods._ So is wise
Tiresias said to have lived, after he had been deprived of his
sight; and Theban Linus; and Calchas the exile; and old
Orpheus. So did the scantily-eating, water-drinking Homer
carry his hero Ulysses through the monster-teeming hall of
Circe, and the straits insidious with the voices of the
Syrens, and through thy courts, too, O infernal King, where he
is said to have held the troops of shades enthralled by
libations of black blood. For the poet is sacred and the
priest of the gods; and his breast and his mouth breathe the
indwelling Jove.
And now, if you will know what I am myself doing (if indeed
you think it is of so much consequence to know if I am doing
anything), here is the fact: we are engaged in singing the
heavenly birth of the King of Peace, and the happy age
promised by the holy books, and the infant cries and cradling
in a manger under a poor roof of that God who rules, with his
Father, the Kingdom of Heaven, and the sky with the new-sprung
star in it, and the ethereal choirs of hymning angels, and the
gods of the heathen suddenly fleeing to their endangered
fanes. This is the gift which we have presented to Christ's
natal day. On that very morning, at daybreak, it was first
conceived. The verses, which are composed in the vernacular,
await you in close keeping; you shall be the judge to whom I
shall recite them.
_Prolusiones quædam Oratoriæ_
Some University Latin Oratorical Exercises, seven in number, first
published in 1674, the year of Milton's death, along with his Familiar
Letters (Epistolæ Familiares), 'as a make-weight to counterbalance the
paucity of the Letters,' have an autobiographic value; but, with the
exception of a small bit, space does not allow the admission of them
here. 'They throw light,' says Masson, 'upon Milton's career at
Cambridge. They illustrate the extent and nature of his reading, his
habits and tastes as a student, the relation in which he stood to the
University system of his time, and to the new intellectual tendencies
which were gradually affecting that system. They also settle in the most
conclusive manner the fact that Milton passed through two stages in his
career at the University,—a stage of decided unpopularity, in his own
College at least, which lasted till about 1628, and a final stage of
triumph, when his powers were recognized.'
Masson characterizes the seventh oratorical exercise as 'one of the
finest pieces of Latin prose ever penned by an Englishman.'
The following is a passage, in Masson's close translation, from this
exercise, which exhibits what continued to be Milton's attitude through
life:
'I regard it, my hearers, as known and accepted by all, that the great
Maker of the Universe, when he had constituted all things else as
fleeting and corruptible, did mingle up with Man, in addition to that of
him which is mortal, a certain divine breath, as it were part of
Himself, immortal, indestructible, free from death and extinction;
which, after it had sojourned purely and holily for some time in the
earth as a heavenly guest, should flutter aloft to its native heaven,
and return to its proper home and fatherland: accordingly, that _nothing
can deservedly be taken into account as among the causes of our
happiness that does not somehow or other regard both that everlasting
life and this civil life below_.'
'When his earlier writings,' says Masson, 'are compared with those of
his coevals at the University, what strikes one most, next to their
vastly greater merit altogether, is their more ideal tone. As, more than
any of them, he was conscious of the _os magna soniturum_, the mouth
formed for great utterances, so all that he does utter has a certain
character and form of magnitude.'
Milton's Latin poem, 'Ad Patrem' (To Father), was occasioned, as may be
seen in the poem, by an expressed dissatisfaction on the part of his
father with his continued devotion, after leaving the University, to his
favorite studies and the Muses, to the exclusion of all consideration of
a profession. He had, while yet at the University, fully decided that
the Church, for which he was destined by his parents, was not for him,
bowing, as it was, beneath the galling 'yoke of prelaty'; and to the
legal profession he must have been equally, if not more, averse.
Such a tribute of filial affection and gratitude, as is this poem,
certainly overcame all objections the father may have expressed in
regard to his course of life at the time.
We learn from this poem, which was no doubt composed soon after Milton's
final return to his father's house at Horton, in 1632, he being then in
his twenty-fourth year, that, along with the Latin and the Greek, he had
acquired, and by his father's advice, a knowledge of the French,
Italian, and Hebrew. We also learn of the father's musical genius, both
instrumental and vocal, and of the son's lofty estimate of the power of
poesy. He ascribes to it a divine nature which evidences man's heavenly
origin, and bespeaks him illuminated from above.
I give the translation by the poet Cowper, which, while being somewhat
free, is, I think, altogether the best and most poetical that has been
made. That by Masson, in hexameters, is closer to the original, but has
in it a dactylic dance which is not so much in harmony with the tone of
the original as is Cowper's blank-verse translation.
_To Father_
Oh, that Pieria's spring would thro' my breast
Pour its inspiring influence, and rush
No rill, but rather an o'erflowing flood!
That, for my venerable father's sake,
All meaner themes renounced, my muse, on wings 5
Of duty borne, might reach a loftier strain.
For thee, my father! howsoe'er it please,
She frames this slender work, nor know I aught
That may thy gifts more suitably requite;
Though to requite them suitably would ask 10
Returns much nobler, and surpassing far
The meagre stores of verbal gratitude;
But, such as I possess, I send thee all.
This page presents thee in their full amount
With thy son's treasures, and the sum is nought; 15
Nought, save the riches that from airy dream
In secret grottos and in laurel bowers
I have, by golden Clio's gift, acquired.
Verse is a work divine; despise not thou
Verse, therefore, which evinces (nothing more) 20
Man's heavenly source, and which, retaining still
Some scintillations of Promethean fire,
Bespeaks him animated from above.
The gods love verse; the infernal Powers themselves
Confess the influence of verse, which stirs 25
The lowest deep, and binds in triple chains
Of adamant both Pluto and the Shades.
In verse the Delphic priestess, and the pale
Tremulous Sibyl make the future known;
And he who sacrifices, on the shrine 30
Hangs verse, both when he smites the threatening bull,
And when he spreads his reeking entrails wide
To scrutinize the Fates enveloped there.
We, too, ourselves, what time we seek again
Our native skies, and one eternal now 35
Shall be the only measure of our being,
Crowned all with gold, and chaunting to the lyre
Harmonious verse, shall range the courts above,
And make the starry firmament resound;
And, even now, the fiery spirit pure 40
That wheels yon circling orbs, directs, himself,
Their mazy dance with melody of verse
Unutterable, immortal, hearing which
Huge Ophiuchus holds his hiss suppressed,
Orion, softened, drops his ardent blade, 45
And Atlas stands unconscious of his load.
Verse graced of old the feasts of kings ere yet
Luxurious dainties, destined to the gulph
Immense of gluttony, were known, and ere
Lyæus deluged yet the temperate board. 50
Then sat the bard a customary guest
To share the banquet, and, his length of locks
With beechen honours bound, proposed in verse
The characters of heroes, and their deeds
To imitation, sang of Chaos old, sword, belt, and club; 55
Of nature's birth, of gods that crept in search
Of acorns fallen, and of the thunder bolt
Not yet produced from Etna's fiery cave.
And what avails, at last, tune without voice,
Devoid of matter? Such may suit perhaps 60
The rural dance, but such was ne'er the song
Of Orpheus, whom the streams stood still to hear
And the oaks followed. Not by chords alone
Well touched, but by resistless accents more
To sympathetic tears the ghosts themselves 65
He moved; these praises to his verse he owes.
Nor thou persist, I pray thee, still to slight
The sacred Nine, and to imagine vain
And useless, powers by whom inspired thyself
Art skilful to associate verse with airs 70
Harmonious, and to give the human voice
A thousand modulations, heir by right
Indisputable of Arion's fame.
Now say, what wonder is it if a son
Of thine delight in verse, if so conjoined 75
In close affinity, we sympathize
In social arts and kindred studies sweet?
Such distribution of himself to us
Was Phœbus' choice; thou hast thy gift and I
Mine also; and between us we receive, 80
Father and son, the whole inspiring god.
No! howsoe'er the semblance thou assume
Of hate, thou hatest not the gentle Muse,
My Father! for thou never bad'st me tread
The beaten path and broad that leads right on 85
To opulence, nor didst condemn thy son
To the insipid clamours of the bar,
To laws voluminous and ill observed;
But, wishing to enrich me more, to fill
My mind with treasure, ledst me far away 90
From city din to deep retreats, to banks
And streams Aonian, and, with free consent,
Didst place me happy at Apollo's side.
I speak not now, on more important themes
Intent, of common benefits and such 95
As nature bids, but of thy larger gifts,
My Father! who, when I had opened once
The stores of Roman rhetoric, and learned
The full-toned language of the eloquent Greeks,
Whose lofty music graced the lips of Jove, 100
Thyself didst counsel me to add the flowers
That Gallia boasts, those, too, with which the smooth
Italian his degenerate speech adorns,
That witnesses his mixture with the Goth;
And Palestine's prophetic songs divine. 105
To sum the whole, whate'er the heaven contains,
The earth beneath it, and the air between,
The rivers and the restless deep, may all
Prove intellectual gain to me, my wish
Concurring with thy will; Science herself, 110
All cloud removed, inclines her beauteous head,
And offers me the lip, if, dull of heart,
I shrink not and decline her gracious boon.
Go now and gather dross, ye sordid minds
That covet it; what could my Father more? 115
What more could Jove himself, unless he gave
His own abode, the heaven, in which he reigns?
More eligible gifts than these were not
Apollo's to his son, had they been safe,
As they were insecure, who made the boy 120
The world's vice-luminary, bade him rule
The radiant chariot of the day, and bind
To his young brows his own all-dazzling wreath.
I, therefore, although last and least, my place
Among the learned in the laurel grove 125
Will hold, and where the conqueror's ivy twines,
Henceforth exempt from the unlettered throng
Profane, nor even to be seen by such.
Away then, sleepless Care, Complaint away,
And Envy, with thy 'jealous leer malign!' 130
Nor let the monster Calumny shoot forth
Her venomed tongue at me. Detested foes!
Ye all are impotent against my peace,
For I am privileged, and bear my breast
Safe, and too high for your viperean wound. 135
But thou, my Father! since to render thanks
Equivalent, and to requite by deeds
Thy liberality, exceeds my power,
Suffice it that I thus record thy gifts,
And bear them treasured in a grateful mind! 140
Ye, too, the favourite pastime of my youth
My voluntary numbers, if ye dare
To hope longevity, and to survive
Your master's funeral, not soon absorbed
In the oblivious Lethæan gulph 145
Shall to futurity perhaps convey
This theme, and by these praises of my sire
Improve the Fathers of a distant age!
_An English letter to a friend (unknown), who, it appears, had been
calling him to account for his apparent indifference as to his work in
life_
This letter has an exceptional autobiographic value. The sonnet, which
is inserted, appears to have been independently written some time
before, and was originally published in 1645, with the heading 'On his
having arrived at the age of twenty-three.'
'SIR,—Besides that in sundry respects I must acknowledge me
to profit by you whenever we meet, you are often to me, and
were yesterday especially, as a good watchman to admonish that
the hours of the night pass on (for so I call my life, as yet
obscure and unserviceable to mankind), and that the day with
me is at hand, wherein Christ commands all to labor, while
there is light. Which, because I am persuaded you do to no
other purpose than out of a true desire that God should be
honoured in every one, I therefore think myself bound, though
unasked, to give you an account, as oft as occasion is, of
this my tardy moving, according to the precept of my
conscience, which I firmly trust is not without God. Yet now I
will not strain for any set apology, but only refer myself to
what my mind shall have at any time to declare herself at her
best ease.
But if you think, as you said, that too much love of learning
is in fault, and that I have given up myself to dream away my
years in the arms of studious retirement, like Endymion with
the moon, as the tale of Latmus goes, yet consider that, if it
were no more but the mere love of learning, whether it proceed
from a principle bad, good, or natural, it could not have held
out thus long against so strong opposition on the other side
of every kind. For, if it be bad, why should not all the fond
hopes that forward youth and vanity are fledge with, together
with gain, pride, and ambition, call me forward more
powerfully than a poor, regardless, and unprofitable sin of
curiosity should be able to withhold me; whereby a man cuts
himself off from all action, and becomes the most helpless,
pusillanimous, and unweaponed creature in the world, the most
unfit and unable to do that which all mortals most aspire to,
either to be useful to his friends or to offend his enemies?
Or, if it be to be thought a natural proneness, there is
against that a much more potent inclination inbred, which
about this time of a man's life solicits most—the desire of
house and family of his own; to which nothing is esteemed more
helpful than the early entering into credible employment, and
nothing hindering than this affected solitariness. And, though
this were enough, yet there is another act, if not of pure,
yet of refined nature, no less available to dissuade prolonged
obscurity—a desire of honour and repute and immortal fame,
seated in the breast of every true scholar; which all make
haste to by the readiest ways of publishing and divulging
conceived merits—as well those that shall, as those that
never shall, obtain it. Nature, therefore, would presently
work the more prevalent way, if there were nothing but this
inferior bent of herself to restrain her. Lastly, the love of
learning, as it is the pursuit of something good, it would
sooner follow the more excellent and supreme good known and
presented, and so be quickly diverted from the empty and
fantastic chase of shadows and notions, to the solid good
flowing from due and timely obedience to that command in the
Gospel set out by the terrible feasing of him that hid the
talent.
It is more probable, therefore, that not the endless delight
of speculation, but this very consideration of that great
commandment, does not press forward, as soon as many do, to
undergo, but keeps off, with a sacred reverence and religious
advisement how _best_ to undergo, not taking thought of being
_late_, so it give advantage to be more _fit_; for those that
were latest lost nothing when the master of the vineyard came
to give each one his hire. And here I am come to a streamhead,
copious enough to disburden itself, like Nilus, at seven
mouths into an ocean. But then I should also run into a
reciprocal contradiction of ebbing and flowing at once, and do
that which I excuse myself for not doing—preach and not
preach. Yet, that you may see that I am something suspicious
of myself, and do take notice of a certain belatedness in me,
I am the bolder to send you some of my nightward thoughts some
while since, because they come in not altogether unfitly, made
up in a Petrarchian stanza, which I told you of:
How soon hath Time, the subtle thief of youth,
Stolen on his wing my three-and-twentieth year!
My hasting days fly on with full career;
But my late spring no bud or blossom shew'th.
Perhaps my semblance might deceive the truth 5
That I to manhood am arrived so near;
And inward ripeness doth much less appear,
That some more timely-happy spirits indu'th.
Yet be it less or more, or soon or slow,
It shall be still in strictest measure even 10
To that same lot, however mean or high,
Toward which Time leads me, and the will of Heaven.
All is, if I have grace to use it so,
As ever in my great Task-Master's eye.
By this I believe you may well repent of having made mention
at all of this matter; for, if I have not all this while won
you to this, I have certainly wearied you of it. This,
therefore, alone may be a sufficient reason for me to keep me
as I am, lest, having thus tired you singly, I should deal
worse with a whole congregation and spoil all the patience of
a parish; for I myself do not only see my own tediousness, but
now grow offended with it, that has hindered me thus long from
coming to the last and best _period_ of my letter, and that
which must now chiefly work my pardon,—that I am
Your true and unfeigned friend, etc.'
_To Alexander Gill, Jr._ (_Familiar Letters_, No. V.)
If you had presented to me a gift of gold, or of preciously
embossed vases, or whatever of that sort mortals admire, it
were certainly to my shame not to have some time or other made
you a remuneration in return, as far as my faculties might
serve. Your gift of the day before yesterday, however, having
been such a sprightly and elegant set of Hendecasyllabics, you
have, just in proportion to the superiority of that gift to
anything in the form of gold, made us the more anxious to find
some dainty means by which to repay the kindness of so
pleasant a favour. We had, indeed, at hand some things of our
own of this same kind, but such as I could nowise deem fit to
be sent in contest of equality of gift with yours. I send,
therefore, what is not exactly mine, but belongs also to the
truly divine poet, this ode of whom, only last week, with no
deliberate intention certainly, but from I know not what
sudden impulse before daybreak, I adapted, almost in bed, to
the rule of Greek heroic verse: with the effect, it seems,
that, relying on this coadjutor, who surpasses you no less in
his subject than you surpass me in art, I should have
something that might have a resemblance of approach to a
balancing of accounts. Should anything meet you in it not
coming up to your usual opinion of our productions, understand
that, since I left your school, this is the first and only
thing I have composed in Greek,—employing myself, as you
know, more willingly in Latin and English matters; inasmuch
as whoever spends study and pains in this age on Greek
composition runs a risk of singing mostly to the deaf. . . .
From our suburban residence (_E nostro suburbano_), December
4, 1634.
_To Charles Diodati._ (_Familiar Letters_, No. VI.)
Now at length I see plainly that what you are driving at is to
vanquish me sometimes in the art of obstinate silence; and, if
it is so, bravo! have that little glory over us, for behold!
we write first. All the same, if ever the question should come
into contention why neither has written to the other for so
long, do not think but that I shall stand by many degrees the
more excused of the two,—manifestly so indeed, as being one
by nature slow and lazy to write, as you well know; while you,
on the other hand, whether by nature or by habit, are wont
without difficulty to be drawn into epistolary correspondence
of this sort. It makes also for my favour that I know your
method of studying to be so arranged that you frequently take
breath in the middle, visit your friends, write much,
sometimes make a journey, whereas my genius is such that no
delay, no rest, no care or thought almost of anything, holds
me aside until I reach the end I am making for, and round
off, as it were, some great period of my studies. . . .
LONDON, September 2, 1637.
_To Charles Diodati._ (_Familiar Letters_, No. VII.)
. . . What besides God has resolved concerning me I know not,
but this at least: _He has instilled into me, if into any one,
a vehement love of the beautiful._ Not with so much labour, as
the fables have it, is Ceres said to have sought her daughter
Proserpina as it is my habit day and night to seek for this
_idea of the beautiful_, as for a certain image of supreme
beauty, through all the forms and faces of things (_for many
are the shapes of things divine_), and to follow it as it
leads me on by some sure traces which I seem to recognize.
Hence it is that, when any one scorns what the vulgar opine in
their depraved estimation of things, and dares to feel and
speak and be that which the highest wisdom throughout all ages
has taught to be best, to that man I attach myself forthwith
by a kind of real necessity, wherever I find him. If, whether
by nature or by my fate, I am so circumstanced that by no
effort or labour of mine can I myself rise to such an honour
and elevation, yet that I should always worship and look up to
those who have attained that glory, or happily aspire to it,
neither gods nor men, I reckon, have bidden nay.
But now I know you wish to have your curiosity satisfied. You
make many anxious inquiries, even as to what I am at present
thinking of. Hearken, Theodotus, but let it be in your private
ear, lest I blush; and allow me for a little to use big
language with you. You ask what I am thinking of? So may the
good Deity help me, of immortality! And what am I doing?
_Growing my wings_ and meditating flight; but as yet our
Pegasus raises himself on very tender pinions. Let us be lowly
wise!
* * * * *
I have by continuous reading brought down the affairs of the
Greeks as far as the time when they ceased to be Greeks. I
have been long engaged in the obscure business of the state of
Italians under the Longobards, the Franks, and the Germans,
down to the time when liberty was granted them by Rodolph,
King of Germany: from that period it will be better to read
separately what each City did by its own wars. . . .
LONDON, September 23, 1637.
_To Benedetto Bonmattei of Florence._ (_Familiar Letters_, No. VIII.)
. . . I, certainly, who have not wet merely the tips of my
lips with both those tongues, but have, as much as any, to the
full allowance of my years, drained their deeper draughts, can
yet sometimes willingly and eagerly go for a feast to that
Dante of yours, and to Petrarch, and a good few more; nor has
Attic Athens herself, with her pellucid Ilissus, nor that old
Rome with her bank of the Tiber, been able so to hold me but
that I love often to visit your Arno and these hills of
Fæsule. See now, I entreat, whether it has not been with
enough of providential cause that _I_ have been given to you
for these few days, as your latest guest from the ocean, who
am so great a lover of your nation that, as I think, there is
no other more so. . . .
FLORENCE, September 10, 1638.
_Mansus_
Milton's Latin poem addressed to Manso, Marquis of Villa, in grateful
acknowledgment of the distinguished attention which had been shown him
by the aged Marquis, during his stay in Naples, contains the first
intimation in his writings of his contemplating an epic poem to be based
on the legendary or mythical history of Britain, with King Arthur for
its hero.
The following is Masson's quite literal prose translation of vv. 70-100:
. . . 'Oh that my lot might yield me such a friend, one who should know
as well how to decorate Apollo's children, if perchance I shall ever
call back into verse our native kings, and Arthur stirring wars even
under the earth that hides him, or speak of the great-souled heroes, the
knights of the unconquered Table, bound in confederate brotherhood, and
(Oh may the spirit be present to me!) break the Saxon phalanxes under
the British Mars. Then, when, having measured out the period of a not
silent life, and full of years, I shall leave the dust its due, he would
stand by my bed with wet eyes; it would be enough if I said to him
standing by "Let me be thy charge;" he would see that my limbs, slacked
in livid death, were softly laid in the narrow coffin; perchance he
would bring out from the marble our features, wreathing the hair either
with the leaf of Paphian myrtle or with that of Parnassian laurel; but I
should repose in secure peace. Then, too, if faith is aught, if there
are assured rewards of the good, I myself, withdrawn into the ether of
the heaven-housed gods, whither labour and the pure mind and the fire of
virtue carry us, shall behold these things from some part of the unseen
world, as far as the fates allow, and, smiling serene, with soul entire,
shall feel my face suffused with the purple light, and applaud myself
the while in the joy of ethereal Olympus.'
_From the 'Areopagitica: a speech for the liberty of unlicensed
printing. To the Parliament of England'_
And lest some should persuade ye, lords and commons, that
these arguments of learned men's discouragement at this your
order are mere flourishes, and not real, I could recount what
I have seen and heard in other countries, where this kind of
inquisition tyrannizes; when I have sat among their learned
men, (for that honour I had,) and been counted happy to be
born in such a place of philosophic freedom, as they supposed
England was, while themselves did nothing but bemoan the
servile condition into which learning amongst them was
brought; that this was it which had damped the glory of
Italian wits; that nothing had been there written now these
many years but flattery and fustian. There it was that I found
and visited the famous Galileo, grown old, a prisoner to the
Inquisition, for thinking in astronomy otherwise than the
Franciscan and Dominican licensers thought. And though I knew
that England then was groaning loudest under the prelatical
yoke, nevertheless I took it as a pledge of future happiness,
that other nations were so persuaded of her liberty.
Yet was it beyond my hope, that those worthies were then
breathing in her air, who should be her leaders to such a
deliverance, as shall never be forgotten by any revolution of
time that this world hath to finish. When that was once begun,
it was as little in my fear, that what words of complaint I
heard among learned men of other parts uttered against the
Inquisition, the same I should hear, by as learned men at
home, uttered in time of parliament against an order of
licensing; and that so generally, that when I had disclosed
myself a companion of their discontent, I might say, if
without envy, that he whom an honest quæstorship had endeared
to the Sicilians, was not more by them importuned against
Verres, than the favourable opinion which I had among many
who honour ye, and are known and respected by ye, loaded me
with entreaties and persuasions, that I would not despair to
lay together that which just reason should bring into my mind,
towards the removal of an undeserved thraldom upon learning.
_To Lucas Holstenius in the Vatican at Rome._ (_Familiar Letters_, No.
IX.)
Although I both can and often do remember many courteous and
most friendly acts done me by many in this my passage through
Italy, yet, for so brief an acquaintance, I do not know
whether I can justly say that from any one I have had greater
proofs of goodwill than those which have come to me from you.
For, when I went up to the Vatican for the purpose of meeting
you, though a total stranger to you,—unless perchance
anything had been previously said about me to you by Alexander
Cherubini,—you received me with the utmost courtesy. Admitted
at once with politeness into the Museum, I was allowed to
behold the superb collection of books, and also very many
manuscript Greek authors set forth with your
explanations,—some of whom, not yet seen in our age, seemed
now, in their array, like Virgil's
penitus convalle virenti
Inclusæ animæ superumque ad lumen ituræ, (vi. 679)
to demand the active hands of the printer, and a delivery into
the world, while others, already edited by your care, are
eagerly received everywhere by scholars:—dismissed, too,
richer than I came, with two copies of one of these last
presented to me by yourself. Then, I could not but believe
that it was in consequence of the mention you made of me to
the most excellent Cardinal Francesco Barberini that, when he,
a few days after, gave that public musical entertainment
with truly Roman magnificence (ἀκρόαμα illud musicum
magnificentiâ vere Romanâ publice exhiberet), he himself,
waiting at the doors, and seeking me out in so great a crowd,
almost seizing me by the hand, indeed, admitted me within
in a truly most honourable manner. Further, when, on this
account, I went to pay my respects to him next day, you again
were the person that both made access for me and obtained me
an opportunity of leisurely conversation with him—an
opportunity such as, with so great a man,—than whom, on the
topmost summit of dignity, nothing more kind, nothing more
courteous,—was truly, place and time considered, too ample
rather than too sparing. . . .
FLORENCE, March 30, 1639.
_Epitaphium Damonis_
The 'Epitaphium Damonis' is a pastoral elegy, occasioned by the death of
Charles Diodati, which occurred in the summer or autumn of 1638, while
Milton was on his continental tour. As an expression of the poet's grief
for the loss of his boyhood's and early manhood's dearest, most
intimate, and sympathetic friend, it has a general autobiographic
character; but it contains one passage (vv. 161-178), having a special
interest of the kind, in which he again alludes to his contemplated epic
poem, to be based on the legendary history of Britain.
The following is Masson's translation of the Argument and of vv.
161-178:
'Thyrsis and Damon, shepherds of the same neighbourhood, following the
same pursuits, were friends from their boyhood, in the highest degree of
mutual attachment. Thyrsis, having set out to travel for mental
improvement, received news when abroad of Damon's death. Afterwards at
length returning, and finding the matter to be so, he deplores himself
and his solitary condition in the following poem. Under the guise of
Damon, however, is here understood Charles Diodati, tracing his descent
on the father's side from the Tuscan city of Lucca, but otherwise
English—a youth remarkable, while he lived, for his genius, his
learning, and other most shining virtues.'
'Go unpastured, my lambs: your master now heeds not your bleating.
_I_ have a theme of the Trojans cruising our southern headlands
Shaping to song, and the realm of Imogen, daughter of Pandras,
Brennus and Arvirach, dukes, and Bren's bold brother, Belinus;
Then the Armorican settlers under the laws of the Britons,
Ay, and the womb of Igraine fatally pregnant with Arthur,
Uther's son, whom he got disguised in Gorlois' likeness,
All by Merlin's craft. Oh then, if life shall be spared me,
Thou shalt be hung, my pipe, far off on some brown dying pine tree,
Much forgotten of me; or else your Latian music
Changed for the British war-screech! What then? For one to do all
things,
One to hope all things, fits not! Prize sufficiently ample
Mine, and distinction great (unheard of ever thereafter
Though I should be, and inglorious, all through the world of the
stranger),
If but yellow-haired Ouse shall read me, the drinker of Alan,
Humber, which whirls as it flows, and Trent's whole valley of
orchards,
Thames, my own Thames, above all, and Tamar's western waters,
Tawny with ores, and where the white waves swinge the far Orkneys.'
_From 'Of Reformation in England'_
Oh, sir, I do now feel myself inwrapped on the sudden into
those mazes and labyrinths of dreadful and hideous thoughts,
that which way to get out, or which way to end, I know not,
unless I turn mine eyes, and with your help lift up my hands
to that eternal and propitious Throne, where nothing is
readier than grace and refuge to the distresses of mortal
suppliants: and it were a shame to leave these serious
thoughts less piously than the heathen were wont to conclude
their graver discourses.
Thou, therefore, that sittest in light and glory
unapproachable, Parent of angels and men! next, thee I
implore, omnipotent King, Redeemer of that lost remnant whose
nature thou didst assume, ineffable and everlasting Love! and
thou, the third subsistence of divine infinitude, illumining
Spirit, the joy and solace of created things! one Tripersonal
godhead! look upon this thy poor and almost spent and expiring
church, leave her not thus a prey to these importunate wolves,
that wait and think long till they devour thy tender flock;
these wild boars that have broke into thy vineyard, and left
the print of their polluting hoofs on the souls of thy
servants. Oh! let them not bring about their damned designs,
that stand now at the entrance of the bottomless pit,
expecting the watchword to open and let out those dreadful
locusts and scorpions, to reinvolve us in that pitchy cloud of
infernal darkness, where we shall never more see the sun of
thy truth again, never hope for the cheerful dawn, never more
hear the bird of morning sing. Be moved with pity at the
afflicted state of this our shaken monarchy, that now lies
labouring under her throes, and struggling against the grudges
of more dreaded calamities.
O thou, that, after the impetuous rage of five bloody
inundations, and the succeeding sword of intestine war,
soaking the land in her own gore, didst pity the sad and
ceaseless revolution of our swift and thick-coming sorrows;
when we were quite breathless, of thy free grace didst motion
peace, and terms of covenant with us; and having first well
nigh freed us from antichristian thraldom, didst build up this
Britannic empire to a glorious and enviable height, with all
her daughter-islands about her; stay us in this felicity, let
not the obstinacy of our half-obedience and will-worship bring
forth that viper of sedition, that for these fourscore years
hath been breeding to eat through the entrails of our peace;
but let her cast her abortive spawn without the danger of this
travailing and throbbing kingdom: that we may still remember
in our solemn thanksgivings, how for us, the northern ocean
even to the frozen Thule was scattered with the proud
shipwrecks of the Spanish armada, and the very maw of hell
ransacked, and made to give up her concealed destruction, ere
she could vent it in that horrible and damned blast.
Oh how much more glorious will those former deliverances
appear, when we shall know them not only to have saved us from
greatest miseries past, but to have reserved us for greatest
happiness to come! Hitherto thou hast but freed us, and that
not fully, from the unjust and tyrannous claim of thy foes;
now unite us entirely, and appropriate us to thyself, tie us
everlastingly in willing homage to the prerogative of thy
eternal throne.
And now we know, O thou our most certain hope and defence,
that thine enemies have been consulting all the sorceries of
the great whore, and have joined their plots with that sad
intelligencing tyrant that mischiefs the world with his mines
of Ophir, and lies thirsting to revenge his naval ruins that
have larded our seas: but let them all take counsel together,
and let it come to nought; let them decree, and do thou cancel
it; let them gather themselves, and be scattered; let them
embattle themselves, and be broken; let them embattle, and be
broken, for thou art with us.
_Then, amidst the hymns and hallelujahs of saints, some one
may perhaps be heard offering at high strains in new and lofty
measures, to sing and celebrate thy divine mercies and
marvellous judgments in this land throughout all ages_;
whereby this great and warlike nation, instructed and inured
to the fervent and continual practice of truth and
righteousness, and casting far from her the rags of her old
vices, may press on hard to that high and happy emulation to
be found the soberest, wisest, and most Christian people at
that day, when thou, the eternal and shortly-expected King,
shalt open the clouds to judge the several kingdoms of the
world, and distributing national honours and rewards to
religious and just commonwealths, shalt put an end to all
earthly tyrannies, proclaiming thy universal and mild monarchy
through heaven and earth; where they undoubtedly, that by
their labours, counsels, and prayers, have been earnest for
the common good of religion and their country, shall receive
above the inferior orders of the blessed, the regal addition
of principalities, legions, and thrones into their glorious
titles, and in supereminence of beatific vision, progressing
the dateless and irrevoluble circle of eternity, shall clasp
inseparable hands with joy and bliss, in overmeasure for ever.
_From 'Animadversions upon the Remonstrant's Defence,' etc._
O thou the ever-begotten Light and perfect Image of the
Father! thou hast opened our difficult and sad times, and
given us an unexpected breathing after our long oppressions:
thou hast done justice upon those that tyrannized over us,
while some men wavered and admired a vain shadow of wisdom in
a tongue nothing slow to utter guile, though thou hast taught
us to admire only that which is good, and to count that only
praiseworthy, which is grounded upon thy divine precepts. Thou
hast discovered the plots, and frustrated the hopes, of all
the wicked in the land, and put to shame the persecutors of
thy church: thou hast made our false prophets to be found a
lie in the sight of all the people, and chased them with
sudden confusion and amazement before the redoubled brightness
of thy descending cloud, that now covers thy tabernacle. Who
is there that cannot trace thee now in thy beamy walk through
the midst of thy sanctuary, amidst those golden candlesticks,
which have long suffered a dimness amongst us through the
violence of those that had seized them, and were more taken
with the mention of their gold than of their starry light;
teaching the doctrine of Balaam, to cast a stumbling-block
before thy servants, commanding them to eat things sacrificed
to idols, and forcing them to fornication? Come, therefore, O
thou that hast the seven stars in thy right hand, appoint thy
chosen priests according to their orders and courses of old,
to minister before thee, and duly to press and pour out the
consecrated oil into thy holy and ever-burning lamps. Thou has
sent out the spirit of prayer upon thy servants over all the
land to this effect, and stirred up their vows as the sound of
many waters about thy throne. Every one can say, that now
certainly thou hast visited this land, and hast not forgotten
the utmost corners of the earth, in a time when men had
thought that thou wast gone up from us to the furthest end of
the heavens, and hadst left to do marvellously among the sons
of these last ages. Oh perfect and accomplish thy glorious
acts! for men may leave their works unfinished, but thou art a
God, thy nature is perfection: shouldst thou bring us thus far
onward from Egypt to destroy us in this wilderness, though we
deserve, yet thy great name would suffer in the rejoicing of
thine enemies, and the deluded hope of all thy servants. When
thou hast settled peace in the church, and righteous judgment
in the kingdom, then shall all thy saints address their
voices of joy and triumph to thee, standing on the shore of
that Red Sea into which our enemies had almost driven us. _And
he that now for haste snatches up a plain ungarnished present
as a thank-offering to thee, which could not be deferred in
regard of thy so many late deliverances wrought for us one
upon another, may then perhaps take up a harp, and sing thee
an elaborate song to generations._ In that day it shall no
more be said as in scorn, this or that was never held so till
this present age, when men have better learnt that the times
and seasons pass along under thy feet to go and come at thy
bidding: and as thou didst dignify our fathers' days with many
revelations above all the foregoing ages, since thou tookest
the flesh; so thou canst vouchsafe to us (though unworthy) as
large a portion of thy Spirit as thou pleasest: for who shall
prejudice thy all-governing will? seeing the power of thy
grace is not passed away with the primitive times, as fond and
faithless men imagine, but thy kingdom is now at hand, and
thou standing at the door. Come forth out of thy royal
chambers, O Prince of all the kings of the earth! put on the
visible robes of thy imperial majesty, take up that unlimited
sceptre which thy Almighty Father hath bequeathed thee; for
now the voice of thy bride calls thee, and all creatures sigh
to be renewed.
_From 'The Reason of Church Government urged against Prelaty'_
For me, I have determined to lay up as the best treasure and
solace of a good old age, if God vouchsafe it me, the honest
liberty of free speech from my youth, where I shall think it
available in so dear a concernment as the church's good. For
if I be, either by disposition or what other cause, too
inquisitive, or suspicious of myself and mine own doings, who
can help it? But this I foresee, that should the church be
brought under heavy oppression, and God have given me ability
the while to reason against that man that should be the author
of so foul a deed; or should she, by blessing from above on
the industry and courage of faithful men, change this her
distracted estate into better days, without the least
furtherance or contribution of those few talents, which God at
that present had lent me; I foresee what stories I should hear
within myself, all my life after, of discourage and reproach.
Timorous and ungrateful, the church of God is now again at the
foot of her insulting enemies, and thou bewailest. What
matters it for thee, or thy bewailing? When time was, thou
couldst not find a syllable of all that thou hast read, or
studied, to utter in her behalf. Yet ease and leisure was
given thee for thy retired thoughts, out of the sweat of other
men. Thou hast the diligence, the parts, the language of a
man, if a vain subject were to be adorned or beautified; but
when the cause of God and his church was to be pleaded, for
which purpose that tongue was given thee which thou hast, God
listened if he could hear thy voice among his zealous
servants, but thou wert dumb as a beast; from henceforward be
that which thine own brutish silence hath made thee. Or else I
should have heard on the other ear: Slothful, and ever to be
set light by, the church hath now overcome her late distresses
after the unwearied labours of many her true servants that
stood up in her defence; thou also wouldst take upon thee to
share amongst them of their joy: but wherefore thou? Where
canst thou shew any word or deed of thine which might have
hastened her peace? Whatever thou dost now talk, or write, or
look, is the alms of other men's active prudence and zeal.
Dare not now to say or do anything better than thy former
sloth and infancy; or if thou darest, thou dost impudently to
make a thrifty purchase of boldness to thyself, out of the
painful merits of other men; what before was thy sin is now
thy duty, to be abject and worthless. These, and such-like
lessons as these, I know would have been my matins duly, and
my even-song. But now by this little diligence, mark what a
privilege I have gained with good men and saints, to claim my
right of lamenting the tribulations of the church, if she
should suffer, when others, that have ventured nothing for her
sake, have not the honour to be admitted mourners. But if she
lift up her drooping head and prosper, among those that have
something more than wished her welfare, I have my charter and
freehold of rejoicing to me and my heirs. Concerning therefore
this wayward subject against prelaty, the touching whereof is
so distasteful and disquietous to a number of men, as by what
hath been said I may deserve of charitable readers to be
credited, that neither envy nor gall hath entered me upon this
controversy, but the enforcement of conscience only, and a
preventive fear lest the omitting of this duty should be
against me, when I would store up to myself the good provision
of peaceful hours: so, lest it should be still imputed to me,
as I have found it hath been, that some self-pleasing humour
of vain-glory hath incited me to contest with men of high
estimation, now while green years are upon my head; from this
needless surmisal I shall hope to dissuade the intelligent and
equal auditor, if I can but say successfully that which in
this exigent behoves me; although I would be heard only, if it
might be, by the elegant and learned reader, to whom
principally for a while I shall beg leave I may address
myself. To him it will be no new thing, though I tell him that
if I hunted after praise, by the ostentation of wit and
learning, I should not write thus out of mine own season when
I have neither yet completed to my mind the full circle of my
private studies, although I complain not of any insufficiency
to the matter in hand; or were I ready to my wishes, it were a
folly to commit anything elaborately composed to the careless
and interrupted listening of these tumultuous times. Next, if
I were wise only to my own ends, I would certainly take such a
subject as of itself might catch applause, whereas this hath
all the disadvantages on the contrary, and such a subject as
the publishing whereof might be delayed at pleasure, and time
enough to pencil it over with all the curious touches of art,
even to the perfection of a faultless picture; whenas in this
argument the not deferring is of great moment to the good
speeding, that if solidity have leisure to do her office, art
cannot have much. Lastly, I should not choose this manner of
writing, wherein knowing myself inferior to myself, led by the
genial power of nature to another task, I have the use, as I
may account, but of my left hand. And though I shall be
foolish in saying more to this purpose, yet, since it will be
such a folly, as wisest men go about to commit, having only
confessed and so committed, I may trust with more reason,
because with more folly, to have courteous pardon. For
although a poet, soaring in the high reason of his fancies,
with his garland and singing robes about him, might, without
apology, speak more of himself than I mean to do; yet for me
sitting here below in the cool element of prose, a mortal
thing among many readers of no empyreal conceit, to venture
and divulge unusual things of myself, I shall petition to the
gentler sort, it may not be envy to me. I must say, therefore,
that after I had for my first years, by the ceaseless
diligence and care of my father, (whom God recompense!) been
exercised to the tongues, and some sciences, as my age would
suffer, by sundry masters and teachers, both at home and at
the schools, it was found that whether aught was imposed me by
them that had the overlooking, or betaken to of mine own
choice in English, or other tongue, prosing or versing, but
chiefly by this latter, the style, by certain vital signs it
had, was likely to live. But much latelier in the private
academies of Italy, whither I was favoured to resort,
perceiving that some trifles which I had in memory, composed
at under twenty or thereabout, (for the manner is, that every
one must give some proof of his wit and reading there,) met
with acceptance above what was looked for; and other things,
which I had shifted in scarcity of books and conveniences to
patch up amongst them, were received with written encomiums,
which the Italian is not forward to bestow on men of this side
the Alps; I began thus far to assent both to them and divers
of my friends here at home, and not less to an inward
prompting which now grew daily upon me, that by labour and
intense study, (which I take to be my portion in this life,)
joined with the strong propensity of nature, I might perhaps
leave something so written to aftertimes, as they should not
willingly let it die. These thoughts at once possessed me, and
these other; that if I were certain to write as men buy
leases, for three lives and downward, there ought no regard be
sooner had than to God's glory, by the honour and instruction
of my country. For which cause, and not only for that I knew
it would be hard to arrive at the second rank among the
Latins, I applied myself to that resolution, which Ariosto
followed against the persuasions of Bembo, to fix all the
industry and art I could unite to the adorning of my native
tongue; not to make verbal curiosities the end, (that were a
toilsome vanity,) but to be an interpreter and relater of the
best and sagest things among mine own citizens throughout this
island in the mother dialect. That what the greatest and
choicest wits of Athens, Rome, or modern Italy, and those
Hebrews of old did for their country, I, in my proportion,
with this over and above, of being a Christian, might do for
mine; not caring to be once named abroad, though perhaps I
could attain to that, but content with these British islands
as my world; whose fortune hath hitherto been, that if the
Athenians, as some say, made their small deeds great and
renowned by their eloquent writers, England hath had her
noble achievements made small by the unskilful handling of
monks and mechanics.
Time serves not now, and perhaps I might seem too profuse to
give any certain account of what the mind at home, in the
spacious circuits of her musing, hath liberty to propose to
herself, though of highest hope and hardest attempting;
whether that epic form whereof the two poems of Homer, and
those other two of Virgil and Tasso, are a diffuse, and the
book of Job a brief model: or whether the rules of Aristotle
herein are strictly to be kept, or nature to be followed,
which in them that know art, and use judgment, is no
transgression, but an enriching of art: and lastly, what king
or knight, before the conquest, might be chosen in whom to lay
the pattern of a Christian hero. And as Tasso gave to a prince
of Italy his choice whether he would command him to write of
Godfrey's expedition against the Infidels, or Belisarius
against the Goths, or Charlemagne against the Lombards; if to
the instinct of nature and the emboldening of art aught may be
trusted, and that there be nothing adverse in our climate, or
the fate of this age, it haply would be no rashness, from an
equal diligence and inclination, to present the like offer in
our own ancient stories; or whether those dramatic
constitutions, wherein Sophocles and Euripides reign, shall be
found more doctrinal and exemplary to a nation. The Scripture
also affords us a divine pastoral drama in the Song of
Solomon, consisting of two persons, and a double chorus, as
Origen rightly judges. And the Apocalypse of St. John is the
majestic image of a high and stately tragedy, shutting up and
intermingling her solemn scenes and acts with a sevenfold
chorus of hallelujahs and harping symphonies: and this my
opinion the grave authority of Pareus, commenting that book,
is sufficient to confirm. Or if occasion shall lead, to
imitate those magnific odes and hymns, wherein Pindarus and
Callimachus are in most things worthy, some others in their
frame judicious, in their matter most an end faulty. But those
frequent songs throughout the law and prophets beyond all
these, not in their divine argument alone, but in the very
critical art of composition, may be easily made appear over
all the kinds of lyric poesy to be incomparable. These
abilities, wheresoever they be found, are the inspired gift of
God, rarely bestowed, but yet to some (though most abuse) in
every nation; and are of power, beside the office of a pulpit,
to imbreed and cherish in a great people the seeds of virtue
and public civility, to allay the perturbations of the mind,
and set the affections in right tune; to celebrate in glorious
and lofty hymns the throne and equipage of God's almightiness,
and what he works, and what he suffers to be wrought with high
providence in his church; to sing victorious agonies of
martyrs and saints, the deeds and triumphs of just and pious
nations, doing valiantly through faith against the enemies of
Christ; to deplore the general relapses of kingdoms and states
from justice and God's true worship. Lastly, whatsoever in
religion is holy and sublime, in virtue amiable or grave,
whatsoever hath passion or admiration in all the changes of
that which is called fortune from without, or the wily
subtleties and refluxes of man's thoughts from within; all
these things with a solid and treatable smoothness to paint
out and describe. Teaching over the whole book of sanctity and
virtue, through all the instances of example, with such
delight to those especially of soft and delicious temper, who
will not so much as look upon truth herself, unless they see
her elegantly dressed; that whereas the paths of honesty and
good life appear now rugged and difficult, though they be
indeed easy and pleasant, they will then appear to all men
both easy and pleasant, though they were rugged and difficult
indeed. And what a benefit this would be to our youth and
gentry, may be soon guessed by what we know of the corruption
and bane which they suck in daily from the writings and
interludes of libidinous and ignorant poetasters, who having
scarce ever heard of that which is the main consistence of a
true poem, the choice of such persons as they ought to
introduce, and what is moral and decent to each one; do for
the most part lay up vicious principles in sweet pills to be
swallowed down, and make the taste of virtuous documents harsh
and sour. But because the spirit of man cannot demean itself
lively in this body, without some recreating intermission of
labour and serious things, it were happy for the commonwealth,
if our magistrates, as in those famous governments of old,
would take into their care, not only the deciding of our
contentious law-cases and brawls, but the managing of our
public sports and festival pastimes; that they might be, not
such as were authorized a while since, the provocations of
drunkenness and lust, but such as may inure and harden our
bodies by martial exercises to all warlike skill and
performance; and may civilize, adorn, and make discreet our
minds by the learned and affable meeting of frequent
academies, and the procurement of wise and artful recitations,
sweetened with eloquent and graceful enticements to the love
and practice of justice, temperance, and fortitude,
instructing and bettering the nation at all opportunities,
that the call of wisdom and virtue may be heard everywhere, as
Solomon saith: 'She crieth without, she uttereth her voice in
the streets, in the top of high places, in the chief
concourse, and in the openings of the gates.' Whether this may
not be, not only in pulpits, but after another persuasive
method, at set and solemn paneguries, in theatres, porches, or
what other place or way may win most upon the people to
receive at once both recreation and instruction, let them in
authority consult. The thing which I had to say and those
intentions which have lived within me ever since I could
conceive myself anything worth to my country, I return to
crave excuse that urgent reason hath plucked from me, by an
abortive and foredated discovery. And the accomplishment of
them lies not but in a power above man's to promise; but that
none hath by more studious ways endeavoured, and with more
unwearied spirit that none shall, that I dare almost aver of
myself, as far as life and free leisure will extend; and that
the land had once enfranchised herself from this impertinent
yoke of prelaty, under whose inquisitorious and tyrannical
duncery, no free and splendid wit can flourish. Neither do I
think it shame to covenant with any knowing reader, that for
some years yet I may go on trust with him toward the payment
of what I am now indebted, as being a work not to be raised
from the heat of youth, or the vapours of wine; like that
which flows at waste from the pen of some vulgar amourist, or
the trencher fury of a rhyming parasite; nor to be obtained by
the invocation of dame Memory and her Siren daughters, but by
devout prayer to that eternal Spirit, who can enrich with all
utterance and knowledge, and sends out his seraphim, with the
hallowed fire of his altar, to touch and purify the lips of
whom he pleases: to this must be added industrious and select
reading, steady observation, insight into all seemly and
generous arts and affairs; till which in some measure be
compassed, at mine own peril and cost, I refuse not to sustain
this expectation from as many as are not loth to hazard so
much credulity upon the best pledges that I can give them.
Although it nothing content me to have disclosed thus much
beforehand, but that I trust hereby to make it manifest with
what small willingness I endure to interrupt the pursuit of no
less hopes than these, and leave a calm and pleasing
solitariness, fed with cheerful and confident thoughts, to
embark in a troubled sea of noises and hoarse disputes, put
from beholding the bright countenance of truth in the quiet
and still air of delightful studies, to come into the dim
reflection of hollow antiquities sold by the seeming bulk, and
there be fain to club quotations with men whose learning and
belief lies in marginal stuffings, who, when they have, like
good sumpters, laid ye down their horse-loads of citations and
fathers at your door, with a rhapsody of who and who were
bishops here or there, ye may take off their packsaddles,
their day's work is done, and episcopacy, as they think,
stoutly vindicated. Let any gentle apprehension, that can
distinguish learned pains from unlearned drudgery imagine what
pleasure or profoundness can be in this, or what honour to
deal against such adversaries. But were it the meanest
under-service, if God by his secretary conscience enjoin it,
it were sad for me if I should draw back; for me especially,
now when all men offer their aid to help, ease, and lighten
the difficult labours of the church, to whose service, by the
intentions of my parents and friends, I was destined of a
child, and in mine own resolutions: till coming to some
maturity of years, and perceiving what tyranny had invaded the
church, that he who would take orders must subscribe slave,
and take an oath withal, which, unless he took with a
conscience that would retch, he must either straight perjure,
or split his faith; I thought it better to prefer a blameless
silence before the sacred office of speaking, bought and begun
with servitude and forswearing. Howsoever, thus church-outed
by the prelates, hence may appear the right I have to meddle
in these matters, as before the necessity and constraint
appeared.
_From 'Apology for Smectymnuus'_
If, readers, to that same great difficulty of well-doing what
we certainly know, were not added in most men as great a
carelessness of knowing what they and others ought to do, we
had been long ere this, no doubt but all of us, much further
on our way to some degree of peace and happiness in this
kingdom. But since our sinful neglect of practising that which
we know to be undoubtedly true and good, hath brought forth
among us, through God's just anger, so great a difficulty now
to know that which otherwise might be soon learnt, and hath
divided us by a controversy of great importance indeed, but of
no hard solution, which is the more our punishment; I resolved
(of what small moment soever I might be thought) to stand on
that side where I saw both the plain authority of scripture
leading, and the reason of justice and equity persuading; with
this opinion, which esteems it more unlike a Christian to be a
cold neuter in the cause of the church, than the law of Solon
made it punishable after a sedition in the state.
And because I observe that fear and dull disposition,
lukewarmness and sloth, are not seldomer wont to cloak
themselves under the affected name of moderation, than true
and lively zeal is customably disparaged with the term of
indiscretion, bitterness, and choler; I could not to my
thinking honour a good cause more from the heart, than by
defending it earnestly, as oft as I could judge it to behove
me, notwithstanding any false name that could be invented to
wrong or undervalue an honest meaning. Wherein although I have
not doubted to single forth more than once such of them as
were thought the chief and most nominated opposers on the
other side, whom no man else undertook; if I have done well
either to be confident of the truth, whose force is best seen
against the ablest resistance, or to be jealous and tender of
the hurt that might be done among the weaker by the entrapping
authority of great names titled to false opinions; or that it
be lawful to attribute somewhat to gifts of God's imparting,
which I boast not, but thankfully acknowledge, and fear also
lest at my certain account they be reckoned to me rather many
than few; or if lastly it be but justice not to defraud of due
esteem the wearisome labours and studious watchings, wherein I
have spent and tired out almost a whole youth, I shall not
distrust to be acquitted of presumption: knowing, that if
heretofore all ages have received with favour and good
acceptance the early industry of him that hath been hopeful,
it were but hard measure now if the freedom of any timely
spirit should be oppressed merely by the big and blunted fame
of his elder adversary; and that his sufficiency must be now
sentenced, not by pondering the reason he shews, but by
calculating the years he brings.
However, as my purpose is not, nor hath been formerly, to look
on my adversary abroad, through the deceiving glass of other
men's great opinion of him, but at home, where I may find him
in the proper light of his own worth, so now against the
rancour of an evil tongue, from which I never thought so
absurdly, as that I of all men should be exempt, I must be
forced to proceed from the unfeigned and diligent inquiry of
my own conscience at home, (for better way I know not,
readers,) to give a more true account of myself abroad than
this modest confuter, as he calls himself, hath given of me.
Albeit, that in doing this I shall be sensible of two things
which to me will be nothing pleasant; the one is, that not
unlikely I shall be thought too much a party in mine own
cause, and therein to see least: the other, that I shall be
put unwillingly to molest the public view with the vindication
of a private name; as if it were worth the while that the
people should care whether such a one were thus, or thus. Yet
those I entreat who have found the leisure to read that name,
however of small repute, unworthily defamed, would be so good
and so patient as to hear the same person not unneedfully
defended.
I will not deny but that the best apology against false
accusers is silence and sufferance, and honest deeds set
against dishonest words. And that I could at this time most
easily and securely, with the least loss of reputation, use no
other defence, I need not despair to win belief; whether I
consider both the foolish contriving and ridiculous aiming of
these his slanderous bolts, shot so wide of any suspicion to
be fastened on me, that I have oft with inward contentment
perceived my friends congratulating themselves in my
innocence, and my enemies ashamed of their partner's folly: or
whether I look at these present times, wherein most men, now
scarce permitted the liberty to think over their own
concernments, have removed the seat of their thoughts more
outward to the expectation of public events: or whether the
examples of men, either noble or religious, who have sat down
lately with a meek silence and sufferance under many libellous
endorsements, may be a rule to others, I might well appease
myself to put up any reproaches in such an honourable society
of fellow-sufferers, using no other defence.
And were it that slander would be content to make an end where
it first fixes, and not seek to cast out the like infamy upon
each thing that hath but any relation to the person traduced,
I should have pleaded against this confuter by no other
advocates than those which I first commended, silence and
sufferance, and speaking deeds against faltering words. But
when I discerned his intent was not so much to smite at me, as
through me to render odious the truth which I had written, and
to stain with ignominy that evangelic doctrine which opposes
the tradition of prelacy, I conceived myself to be now not as
mine own person, but as a member incorporate into that truth
whereof I was persuaded, and whereof I had declared openly to
be a partaker. Whereupon I thought it my duty, if not to
myself, yet to the religious cause I had in hand, not to leave
on my garment the least spot or blemish in good name, so long
as God should give me to say that which might wipe it off;
lest those disgraces which I ought to suffer, if it so befall
me, for my religion, through my default religion be made
liable to suffer for me. And, whether it might not something
reflect upon those reverent men, whose friend I may be thought
in writing the Animadversions, was not my last care to
consider: if I should rest under these reproaches, having the
same common adversary with them, it might be counted small
credit for their cause to have found such an assistant, as
this babbler hath devised me. What other thing in his book
there is of dispute or question, in answering thereto I doubt
not to be justified; except there be who will condemn me to
have wasted time in throwing down that which could not keep
itself up. As for others, who notwithstanding what I can
allege have yet decreed to misinterpret the intents of my
reply, I suppose they would have found as many causes to have
misconceived the reasons of my silence.
* * * * *
Thus having spent his first onset, not in confuting, but in a
reasonless defaming of the book, the method of his malice
hurries him to attempt the like against the author; not by
proofs and testimonies, but 'having no certain notice of me,'
as he professes, 'further than what he gathers from the
Animadversions,' blunders at me for the rest, and flings out
stray crimes at a venture, which he could never, though he be
a serpent, suck from anything that I have written, but from
his own stuffed magazine and hoard of slanderous inventions,
over and above that which he converted to venom in the
drawing. To me, readers, it happens as a singular contentment;
and let it be to good men no light satisfaction, that the
slanderer here confesses he has 'no further notice of me than
his own conjecture.' Although it had been honest to have
inquired, before he uttered such infamous words, and I am
credibly informed he did inquire; but finding small comfort
from the intelligence which he received, whereon to ground the
falsities which he had provided, thought it his likeliest
course, under a pretended ignorance, to let drive at random,
lest he should lose his odd ends, which from some penurious
book of characters he had been culling out and would fain
apply. Not caring to burden me with those vices, whereof,
among whom my conversation hath been, I have been ever least
suspected; perhaps not without some subtlety to cast me into
envy, by bringing on me a necessity to enter into mine own
praises. In which argument I know every wise man is more
unwillingly drawn to speak, than the most repining ear can be
averse to hear.
Nevertheless, since I dare not wish to pass this life
unpersecuted of slanderous tongues, for God hath told us that
to be generally praised is woeful, I shall rely on his promise
to free the innocent from causeless aspersions: whereof
nothing sooner can assure me, than if I shall feel him now
assisting me in the just vindication of myself, which yet I
could defer, it being more meet, that to those other matters
of public debatement in this book I should give attendance
first, but that I fear it would but harm the truth for me to
reason in her behalf, so long as I should suffer my honest
estimation to lie unpurged from these insolent suspicions. And
if I shall be large, or unwonted in justifying myself to those
who know me not, for else it would be needless, let them
consider that a short slander will ofttimes reach further than
a long apology; and that he who will do justly to all men,
must begin from knowing how, if it so happen, to be not unjust
to himself. I must be thought, if this libeller (for now he
shows himself to be so) can find belief, after an inordinate
and riotous youth spent at the university, to have been at
length 'vomited out thence.' For which commodious lie, that he
may be encouraged in the trade another time, I thank him; for
it hath given me an apt occasion to acknowledge publicly with
all grateful mind, that more than ordinary favour and respect,
which I found above any of my equals at the hands of those
courteous and learned men, the fellows of that college wherein
I spent some years: who, at my parting, after I had taken two
degrees, as the manner is, signified many ways how much better
it would content them that I would stay; as by many letters
full of kindness and loving respect, both before that time,
and long after, I was assured of their singular good affection
towards me. Which being likewise propense to all such as were
for their studious and civil life worthy of esteem, I could
not wrong their judgments and upright intentions, so much as
to think I had that regard from them for other cause, than
that I might be still encouraged to proceed in the honest and
laudable courses, of which they apprehended I had given good
proof. And to those ingenuous and friendly men, who were ever
the countenancers of virtuous and hopeful wits, I wish the
best and happiest thing that friends in absence wish one to
another.
As for the common approbation or dislike of that place, as now
it is, that I should esteem or disesteem myself, or any other
the more for that, too simple and too credulous is the
confuter, if he think to obtain with me, or any right
discerner. Of small practice were that physician, who could
not judge by what both she and her sister hath of long time
vomited, that the worser stuff she strongly keeps in her
stomach, but the better she is ever kecking at, and is queasy.
She vomits now out of sickness; but ere it will be well with
her, she must vomit by strong physic. In the meantime, that
suburb sink, as this rude scavenger calls it, and more than
scurrilously taunts it with the plague, having a worse plague
in his middle entrail, that suburb wherein I dwell shall be in
my account a more honourable place than his university. Which
as in the time of her better health, and mine own younger
judgment, I never greatly admired, so now much less. But he
follows me to the city, still usurping and forging beyond his
book notice, which only _he_ affirms to have had; 'and where
my morning haunts are, he wisses not.' It is wonder that,
being so rare an alchymist of slander, he could not extract
that, as well as the university vomit, and the suburb sink
which his art could distil so cunningly; but because his
lembec fails him, to give him and envy the more vexation, I
will tell him.
Those morning haunts are where they should be, at home; not
sleeping, or concocting the surfeits of an irregular feast,
but up and stirring, in winter often ere the sound of any bell
awake men to labour or to devotion; in summer as oft with the
bird that first rouses, or not much tardier, to read good
authors, or cause them to be read, till the attention be
weary, or memory have its full fraught: then, with useful and
generous labours preserving the body's health and hardiness to
render lightsome, clear, and not lumpish obedience to the
mind, to the cause of religion, and our country's liberty,
when it shall require firm hearts in sound bodies to stand and
cover their stations, rather than to see the ruin of our
protestation, and the inforcement of a slavish life.
These are the morning practices: proceed now to the afternoon;
'in playhouses,' he says, 'and the bordelloes.' Your
intelligence, unfaithful spy of Canaan? He gives in his
evidence, that 'there he hath traced me.' Take him at his
word, readers; but let him bring good sureties ere ye dismiss
him, that while he pretended to dog others, he did not turn in
for his own pleasure: for so much in effect he concludes
against himself, not contented to be caught in every other
gin, but he must be such a novice as to be still hampered in
his own hemp. In the Animadversions, saith he, I find the
mention of old cloaks, false beards, night-walkers, and salt
lotion; therefore, the animadverter haunts playhouses and
bordelloes; for if he did not, how could he speak of such
gear? Now that he may know what it is to be a child, and yet
to meddle with edged tools, I turn his antistrophon upon his
own head; the confuter knows that these things are the
furniture of playhouses and bordelloes, therefore, by the same
reason, 'the confuter himself hath been traced in those
places.' Was it such a dissolute speech, telling of some
politicians who were wont to eavesdrop in disguises, to say
they were often liable to a night-walking cudgeller, or the
emptying of a urinal? What if I had writ, as your friend the
author of the aforesaid mime, 'Mundus alter et idem,' to have
been ravished like some young Cephalus or Hylas, by a troop of
camping housewives in Viraginea, and that he was there forced
to swear himself an uxorious varlet; then after a long
servitude to have come into Aphrodisia, that pleasant country,
that gave such a sweet smell to his nostrils among the
shameless courtezans of Desvergonia? Surely he would have then
concluded me as constant at the bordello, as the galley-slave
at his oar.
But since there is such necessity to the hearsay of a tire, a
periwig, or a vizard, that plays must have been seen, what
difficulty was there in that? when in the colleges so many of
the young divines, and those in next aptitude to divinity,
have been seen so often upon the stage, writhing and unboning
their clergy limbs to all the antic and dishonest gestures of
Trinculoes, buffoons, and bawds; prostituting the shame of
that ministry, which either they had, or were nigh having, to
the eyes of courtiers and court ladies, with their grooms and
mademoiselles. There, while they acted and overacted, among
other young scholars, I was a spectator; they thought
themselves gallant men, and I thought them fools; they made
sport, and I laughed; they mispronounced, and I misliked; and,
to make up the Atticism, they were out, and I hissed. Judge
now whether so many good textmen were not sufficient to
instruct me of false beards and vizards, without more
expositors; and how can this confuter take the face to object
to me the seeing of that which his reverend prelates allow,
and incite their young disciples to act? For if it be unlawful
to sit and behold a mercenary comedian personating that which
is least unseemly for a hireling to do, how much more blameful
is it to endure the sight of as vile things acted by persons
either entered, or presently to enter, into the ministry; and
how much more foul and ignominious for them to be the actors!
But because as well by this upbraiding to me the bordelloes,
as by other suspicious glancings in his book, he would seem
privily to point me out to his readers, as one whose custom of
life were not honest, but licentious, I shall entreat to be
borne with, though I digress; and in a way not often trod,
acquaint ye with the sum of my thoughts in this matter,
through the course of my years and studies: although I am not
ignorant how hazardous it will be to do this under the nose of
the envious, as it were in skirmish to change the compact
order, and instead of outward actions, to bring inmost
thoughts into front. And I must tell ye, readers, that by this
sort of men I have been already bitten at; yet shall they not
for me know how slightly they are esteemed, unless they have
so much learning as to read what in Greek ἀπειροκαλία is,
which, together with envy, is the common disease of those
who censure books that are not for their reading. With me it
fares now, as with him whose outward garment hath been injured
and ill-bedighted; for having no other shift, what help but to
turn the inside outwards, especially if the lining be of the
same, or, as it is sometimes, much better? So if my name and
outward demeanour be not evident enough to defend me, I must
make trial if the discovery of my inmost thoughts can: wherein
of two purposes, both honest and both sincere, the one
perhaps I shall not miss; although I fail to gain belief with
others, of being such as my perpetual thoughts shall here
disclose me, I may yet not fail of success in persuading some
to be such really themselves, as they cannot believe me to be
more than what I feign.
I had my time, readers, as others have, who have good learning
bestowed upon them, to be sent to those places where, the
opinion was, it might be soonest attained; and as the manner
is, was not unstudied in those authors which are most
commended. Whereof some were grave orators and historians,
whose matter methought I loved indeed, but as my age then was,
so I understood them; others were the smooth elegiac poets,
whereof the schools are not scarce, whom both for the pleasing
sound of their numerous writing, which in imitation I found
most easy, and most agreeable to nature's part in me, and for
their matter, which what it is, there be few who know not, I
was so allured to read, that no recreation came to me better
welcome. For that it was then those years with me which are
excused, though they be least severe, I may be saved the
labour to remember ye. Whence having observed them to account
it the chief glory of their wit, in that they were ablest to
judge, to praise, and by that could esteem themselves
worthiest to love those high perfections, which under one or
other name they took to celebrate; I thought with myself by
every instinct and presage of nature, which is not wont to be
false, that what emboldened them to this task, might with such
diligence as they used embolden me; and that what judgment,
wit, or elegance was my share, would herein best appear, and
best value itself, by how much more wisely, and with more love
of virtue I should choose (let rude ears be absent) the object
of not unlike praises. For albeit these thoughts to some will
seem virtuous and commendable, to others only pardonable, to a
third sort perhaps idle; yet the mentioning of them now will
end in serious.
Nor blame it, readers, in those years to propose to themselves
such a reward, as the noblest dispositions above other things
in this life have sometimes preferred: whereof not to be
sensible when good and fair in one person meet, argues both a
gross and shallow judgment, and withal an ungentle and
swainish breast. For by the firm settling of these
persuasions, I became, to my best memory, so much a
proficient, that if I found those authors anywhere speaking
unworthy things of themselves, or unchaste of those names
which before they had extolled; this effect it wrought with
me, from that time forward their art I still applauded, but
the men I deplored; and above them all, preferred the two
famous renowners of Beatrice and Laura, who never write but
honour of them to whom they devote their verse, displaying
sublime and pure thoughts, without transgression. And long it
was not after, when I was confirmed in this opinion, _that he
who would not be frustrate of his hope to write well hereafter
in laudable things, ought himself to be a true poem; that is,
a composition and pattern of the best and honourablest things;
not presuming to sing high praises of heroic men, or famous
cities, unless he have in himself the experience and the
practice of all that which is praiseworthy_. These reasonings,
together with a certain niceness of nature, an honest
haughtiness, and self-esteem either of what I was, or what I
might be, (which let envy call pride,) and lastly that
modesty, whereof, though not in the title-page, yet here I may
be excused to make some beseeming profession; all these
uniting the supply of their natural aid together, kept me
still above those low descents of mind, beneath which he must
deject and plunge himself, that can agree to saleable and
unlawful prostitutions.
Next, (for hear me out now, readers,) that I may tell ye
whither my younger feet wandered; I betook me among those
lofty fables and romances, which recount in solemn cantos the
deeds of knighthood founded by our victorious kings, and from
hence had in renown over all Christendom. There I read it in
the oath of every knight, that he should defend to the expense
of his best blood, or of his life, if it so befell him, the
honour and chastity of virgin or matron; from whence even then
I learned what a noble virtue chastity sure must be, to the
d
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